The history of entrepreneurship is a wide one with
different scholars, different views and different understanding and
interpretation.
Entrepreneurship as we know has as
its concepts innovation, creativity, and invention etc, started in the 13th
century in Italy with one man called “Marco Polo”. He had ideas of trading with
Asia and was sure of how he could get there and the materials he could trade. His
expeditions were financed by venture capitalists in Venice with an assurance
that he would share
his profits with them. These loose associations continued
to flourish in Europe and other parts of the world where people with money were
willing to back ideas and new schemes when they were convinced that there was
some pecuniary advantage in the end.
Entrepreneurship first took off when
production levels exceeded local consumption and people were left with
surpluses of the things they produced, whether in the form of agricultural
produce, dairy products, livestock and quite a few manufactured items.
This initially led to a barter
system that allowed people exchanged things to satisfy their own requirements.
This further led to the development of the market place where people gathered
to barter or self their excess production in order to profit them. This came
with the realization that they could not wait indefinitely for a coincidence of
wants before they could barter their own products.
Government agencies stepped into the
act in the 17th century and made capital available to people to
finance production ventures. The risk involved in such ventures was the sole
responsibility of the entrepreneur was one who ran huge production
projects without any financial risk and with finance provided by the others,
notably the government. A clear distinction was made between the entrepreneur
and the capital provider. This change in thinking was necessitated by the
industrialization that made its effect felt in that century. Even Thomas Edison
ran into a huge financial crunch when he wanted to finance his ideas and inventions
and had to get his capital from private sources. He was a complete entrepreneur
and left the financing of his ventures to others.
The Internet has led to a virtual
explosion of new advantage of the ease of communication.
Nowadays,
an entrepreneur is regarded as one who organizes, controls, purchases raw materials;
arrange materials and machinery to produce the goods. An entrepreneur is also
one who throws in their own enterprise and inventiveness and also administers
the venture.
A venture capitalist helps the
entrepreneur with the capital to set up the venture but also takes the risk of
its failure. If the entrepreneur succeeds the venture capitalist takes his/her
own share of the profit which has been earlier negotiated. These returns are
necessarily high to cover the risk.
1.2 OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY
This study has as its general objective, a look into
the entrepreneurship studies in Nigeria,
and to assess the depth, trends and the challenges of entrepreneurship studies in Nigeria.
1.3 SCOPE/DELIMITATION
OF THE STUDY
The scope of the study covers, the topic
(Entrepreneurship studies in Nigeria the depth, trends and challenges.)
Most of the materials used for this
work were gathered from the internet and time purchased (assess to the internet).
Costs were incurred in the course of this work. The transportation cost, cost
of typing, etc. the energy exerted and related stresses were not left out.
1.4 SIGNIFICANCE
OF THE STUDY
The result from this work shall help in the in depth
knowledge of the researcher on the subject matter and shall also give to
anybody who may come across this piece work, a broad knowledge of
entrepreneurship studies in Nigeria the depth, trends and the challenges.
1.5 LIMITATION
OF THE STUDY
There are no limitations to this study. The researcher
was well prepared before embarking on the project.