The Value of Youth Entrepreneurship and Self-employment

It is now widely accepted that there are many good reasons to promote entrepreneurship among young people. While caution should be exercised so that entrepreneurship is not seen as a ‘mass’ or wide-ranging solution which can cure all society’s social ills, as many experts such as Curtain (2000) warn, it has a number of potential benefits. An obvious, and perhaps significant one, is that it creates employment for the young person who owns the business.  For a young man or woman, there are two career options: one is wage-employment in which he works in government or non government organisation on a fixed wage or salary. The other is self-employment in which an individual employs himself either in producing goods or rendering services for a price run by you. Similarly, you may start a tailoring, shop to stitch clothes of others.  

Entrepreneurship involves risk. An entrepreneur is a person who undertakes projects involving risks. He tries to Innovate new products, new methods of production, and marketing. He bears the risk of uncertainty in the hope of profit. Greater is .the risk Involved, greater may be the profit.  
 

Self-employment, on the other hand, refers to full-time involvement in ah occupation. Self-employment may or may not involve risk. A tailor, for example, may start a business by purchasing a sewing machine with his own resources at his . own residence. It involves very less risk. But if he expands his business by employing many people using modern machines, it may be more risky to invest his own savings or borrow money for that purpose. If he decides to take the risk, there may be an element of entrepreneurship in that venture. If he is continuously engaged in expanding his business by innovating new products, he will be engaging in entrepreneurial activities. However, strictly speaking, an entrepreneur does not continue to run the same business for a long period of time.  
 

Self-employment, thus, does not mean the same thing as entrepreneurship. But self-employment promotes entrepreneurship. A self-employed person has to be innovative, to be able to prosper and must take risks where necessary in his own interest.  
 

One need only look at companies like Facebook, Twitter, Apple. One of the characteristics that these companies have in common is their ability to see opportunities, seize them and promote innovation as part of their system. Entrepreneurial companies have extraordinary growth over a sustained period and thus impact remarkably on economic growth.    
 

Due to the many strong arguments for entrepreneurship, promoting an entrepreneurial culture should be encouraged by word and might from the country’s leaders. This should be accompanied by directing our education system to deliver individuals with a good combination of specialist and generalist skills. On top of this, the main tenets of entrepreneurship should be a common course for all students so as to equip them with necessary skills like writing a business plan, preparing a proposal to present to investors, how to register a company, general accounting skills and other necessary skills.