ERNST &YOUNG ENTREPRENEUR OF THE YEAR® PROGRAMMEThe Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year® believe that entrepreneurs should be encouraged and nurtured – led out – through recognition, thought leadership, networking, and education, broadly defined.
The thought leadership offered here will be provocative, controversial, fresh and regularly refreshed to offer entrepreneurs some of the latest ‘best of breed’ thinking on entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs.
Enda Kelly, Ernst & Young Partner in charge of the EOY Programme uses the Harvard University definition of entrepreneurship as “…the pursuit of opportunity beyond the resources you currently control”. This definition brings together the three key ingredients of entrepreneurship – the individual, the opportunity mindset or focus and the society in which the individual finds himself or herself embedded in. Enda goes on, “The individual spots the opportunity for economic and/or social value and then- as an ‘entrepreneur’- goes about seeking out the resources from the wider society to make the whole thing happen”.
What has been happening in Ireland over the last decade is, according to Enda, “a significant increase in the availability of resources for the pursuit of opportunities and today that resource is at levels never available to previous generations of entrepreneurs in Ireland”. He says that “many people focus on the availability of capital, but this is narrow!” He goes on “there are equally, if not more important societal resources - these are intellectual capital, human capital and public capital in the form of infrastructure and social norms that provide a vital resource to the entrepreneur. Government programmes in third level education and IDA success in bringing in high value –add international businesses since the 1970s have created the resource platform for world-chart topping entrepreneurship in Ireland today”
Enda points out, from a study covering the history and culture of more than 40 countries, that all of the drivers for an entrepreneurial economy are now in place in Ireland:
- Availability and mobility of resources
- Successful entrepreneurs reinvesting their excess capital in the projects of other entrepreneurs
- Success of entrepreneurs is celebrated, rather than derided
- Change is seen as positive, rather than negative.
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