DEVELOPING AN ENTREPRENEURIAL ORGANIZATION; A DRIVE FOR NATION BUILDING
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY
Pinchot (1984) defined entrepreneurs as “dreamers who do. Those who take hands-on responsibility for creating innovation of any kind, within a business”. In 1992, The American Heritage Dictionary acknowledged the popular use of a new word, entrepreneur, to mean “A person within a large corporation who takes direct responsibility for turning an idea into a profitable finished product through assertive risk-taking and innovation”. The researcher is of the opinion that
such risk taking and innovation coupled with the profitability accrued from it will make an entrepreneurial organization a veritable for nation building. Koch (2014) goes further, claiming that entrepreneurs are the “secret weapon” of the business world. Based on these definitions, being an entrepreneur is considered to be beneficial for both entrepreneurs and large organizations. Companies support entrepreneurs with finance and access to corporate resources, while entrepreneurs create innovation for companies. Such organizations can be described as Entrepreneurial organizations.
Entrepreneurial organizations are known to be operated with practice of a corporate management style that integrates risk-taking and innovation approaches, as well as the reward and motivational techniques, that are more traditionally thought of as being the province of entrepreneurship.
The first written use of the terms ‘entrepreneur’, ‘Entrepreneurial,’ and ‘entrepreneurship’ date from a paper written in 1978 by Giord Pinchot III and Elizabeth Pinchot. Later the term was credited to Giord Pinchot III by Norman Macrae in the April 17, 1982 issue of the Economist. The first formal academic case study of corporate entrepreneurship or entrepreneurship was published in June 1982, as a Master’s in Management thesis, by Howard Edward Haller, on the Entrepreneurial creation of PRIME Leasing within PRIME Computer Inc. (from 1977 to 1981). This academic research was later published as a case study
by VDM Verlag as Entrepreneurial Success: A PRIME Example. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language included the term ‘entrepreneur’ in its 3rd 1992 Edition, and also credited Pinchot as the originator of the concept.
