In its original French, entrepreneur means literally someone who undertakes--not an undertaker in the sense of a funeral director, but someone who undertakes an important task or project.The term soon came to be associated with venturesome individuals who stimulated economic progress by finding new and better ways of doing things. The French economist Jean Bapiste Say summed it up at the turn of the 19th century when he described entrepreneurs this way: "The entrepreneur shifts economic resources out of an area of lower and into an area of higher productivity and greater yield." In other words, entrepreneurs create value. "
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"With pen and ink, Adam Smith made the entrepreneur invisible. J.B. Say brings him back to life and to the center of the stage."
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"Say also developed a noted theory of markets and the concept of the entrepreneur."
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The French have a word for entrepreneur, "l'entrepreneur," and they (in particular, Say) are responsible for giving it its contemporary American, and French, meaning.
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