Wednesday, July 2, 2025

Entrepreneurship Development notes, SEC II, Subject Code 502S3A, M.A English, 2nd Year 3rd Semester, University of Madras

 

2nd M.A ENGLISH

3rd SEMESTER

SEC II - ENTREPRENEURSHIP DEVELOPMENT

Subject Code - 502S3A

UNIT

TOPICS

 

 

I

Introduction

Meaning and Importance

Evolution of term ‘Entrepreneurship’

Factors influencing Entrepreneurship - Psychological Factors –

Social Factors - Economic Factors - Environmental factors.



Unit - I
Introduction

A person who starts a business based on an existing idea and gains a market through work is an entrepreneur. An entrepreneur, on the other hand, introduces an original idea and creates a new market for his business. The key difference between the two is the entrepreneur's innovation and ability to create new market opportunities, as opposed to an entrepreneur who builds on existing ideas.

Meaning of Entrepreneur

The French verb enterprendre, which meaning "to undertake," is where the English word "entrepreneur" originates from. This is a reference to those who "undertake" the risk of starting small businesses. One definition of an entrepreneur is someone who is a starter, a challenger, and a driver. 

Concept of Entrepreneurship

An entrepreneur is a person who creates a new product or service or otherwise takes action in the market by using innovation and creativity. An entrepreneur initiates and organizes a business to take advantage of emerging opportunities. As a decision-maker, the entrepreneur determines what goods or services will be produced or distributed, where and when they will be produced, and in what quantities. Entrepreneurship is the process of combining resources, such as capital, land, and labor, to produce goods or provide services by establishing a business. In situations of great market turmoil, the entrepreneur has the ability to clarify doubts by making decisions and taking risks. Although entrepreneurship involves high risk, it also carries the potential for high profits, which can lead to the creation of economic prosperity, growth, and innovation.


Evolution of term ‘Entrepreneurship’

Early Period: Marco Polo is credited as the first person to define an entrepreneur as an agent connecting different entities. One of his goals was to establish a trade route to the Far East. In the past, he would make deals with investors to sell his products, with the investors bearing the financial risk. The role of the trader was seen as that of an adventurer. Once the journey was complete and the products were successfully sold, the profits were divided between the investor and the trader.

Middle Ages: A person responsible for managing large-scale initiatives is called an entrepreneur. Instead of taking risks, he focuses on efficiently using available resources to complete projects. A good example of this approach is a clergyman who oversees the construction of significant architectural structures such as cathedrals, public buildings, and castles. This type of management emphasizes the importance of planning and organization in implementing ambitious projects.

17th Century: In the past, a person who entered into a contract with the government for services or goods was considered an entrepreneur, responsible for profits and losses. This definition focused on financial risk and responsibility for results. Today, the entrepreneur's role also includes innovation and value creation in various sectors.

18th Century: Richard Cantillon, a French economist, is credited with first using the term "entrepreneur" in a business context. He defined an entrepreneur as a person who buys the services of factors of production at fixed rates, with the intention of selling them at unspecified prices in the future. His approach emphasizes risk and uncertainty in business activities, making entrepreneurship a key element of economic analysis.

19th Century: Managers and entrepreneurs were not distinguished from each other, which suggests that their roles overlap. The analysis of their actions was based mainly on the economic perspective. The entrepreneur is characterized by a willingness to take risks and proactivity in initiating actions. His activities are carefully planned and organized, which emphasizes the importance of management skills in entrepreneurship.

20th Century: Dewing, who lived in the early 20th century, defined an entrepreneur as a business promoter who transforms ideas into profitable ventures. Joseph Schumpeter was the first to use the term "entrepreneur" in the context of "innovator", emphasizing that an entrepreneur is a person who creates untested technologies.

21th Century: De Bone researchers noted that an entrepreneur can be not only a person who creates new ideas, but also one who introduces incremental improvements to existing products or services. Innovation by adding value is as important as creating new ideas, which means that entrepreneurship also includes improving and adapting existing solutions.


Factors influencing Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship is influenced by various factors that shape the decisions, opportunities, and challenges faced by entrepreneurs.

Psychological factors:  Psychological aspects play a key role in starting and maintaining a business. An individual’s state of mind, including risk tolerance, need for achievement, self-confidence, creativity, and resilience, are central to an entrepreneur’s ability to cope with business challenges. A strong desire to succeed often motivates individuals to overcome obstacles, while creativity and innovative thinking enable them to discover new opportunities in the marketplace. Resilience, the ability to adapt in the face of adversity, and the willingness to take calculated risks are psychological traits that contribute to entrepreneurial success.

Social factors: Social factors have a significant impact on entrepreneurship, as support from family, friends, and peers can shape an entrepreneur’s path. Family support often provides emotional and financial support in the early stages of a business. Social networks, including mentors and industry professionals, provide critical advice and open doors to financing and business opportunities. Cultural norms and societal attitudes toward risk-taking, innovation, and failure affect how individuals perceive and are willing to engage in entrepreneurship.

Economic factors: Economic factors are key to the success of businesses. Access to capital, which can come from savings, loans, venture capital, or crowdfunding, is essential to starting and growing businesses. The economic environment, including market demand, inflation, and interest rates, influences business decisions. Demand increases in a growing economy, while inflation and higher interest rates can discourage investment. Government policies and tax regulations can both support and hinder entrepreneurs.

Environmental factors: Environmental factors such as technological progress, legal and regulatory frameworks, and the level of competition have a significant impact on entrepreneurship. Technological progress opens up new opportunities for innovation and market expansion, allowing entrepreneurs to develop innovative products and reach global markets. On the other hand, legal and regulatory factors, including intellectual property laws and company registration processes, can both facilitate and complicate the entrepreneur's journey. 

All these factors—psychological, social, economic, and environmental—interact to create a dynamic and ever-changing environment in which entrepreneurship thrives.

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Saturday, May 17, 2025

Freedom From the Known by J. Krishnamurti, Chapter 6 Summary, Contemporary Literature, 3rd Year 6th Semester, B.A English Literature

 B.A English Literature

3rd Year 6th Semester

CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
2.4 “Freedom From the Known”- Chapter 6 - J. Krishnamurti

About Author:

Jiddu Krishnamurti was born on 11 May 1895 in Madanapalle, a small town in south India. He and his brother were adopted in their youth by Dr Annie Besant, then president of the Theosophical Society. His books include The Songs of Life (1931) and Commentaries on Living (1956–60). He died on 17 February 1986.

About Prose:

Freedom from the Known is a book by Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986), originally published 1969. It contains 16 chapters.

Summary:

 In Chapter 6 of "Freedom From the Known," J. Krishnamurti delves into the nature of freedom, defining it as a state that goes beyond societal conditioning and personal experiences. He asserts that genuine freedom cannot be achieved through established beliefs, traditions, or psychological patterns; rather, it emerges from a profound self-awareness and the capacity to observe one's thoughts and emotions without attachment.

Krishnamurti contends that the quest for knowledge and security often results in a form of bondage, as people become attached to familiar concepts and identities. He urges readers to challenge their assumptions and to welcome uncertainty as a means to achieve liberation. By relinquishing the known, individuals can unlock a sense of openness and creativity, paving the way for authentic transformation.

The chapter underscores the significance of awareness and mindfulness in overcoming conditioned responses. Krishnamurti emphasizes that such awareness is crucial for developing a deeper connection with oneself and the surrounding world, ultimately leading to a more genuine and fulfilling life. He encourages readers to engage in self-inquiry, which can foster a richer understanding of what true freedom entails.


Text: Chapter 6

FEAR, PLEASURE, SORROW, thought and violence are all interrelated. Most of us take pleasure in violence, in disliking somebody, hating a particular race or group of people, having antagonistic feelings towards others. But in a state of mind in which all violence has come to an end there is a joy which is very different from the pleasure of violence with its conflicts, hatreds and fears.

Can we go to the very root of violence and be free from it? Otherwise we shall live everlastingly in battle with each other. If that is the way you want to live - and apparently most people do - then carry on; if you say, `Well, I'm sorry, violence can never end', then you and I have no means of communication, you have blocked yourself; but if you say there might be a different way of living, then we shall be able to communicate with each other.

So let us consider together, those of us who can communicate, whether it is at all possible totally to end every form of violence in ourselves and still live in this monstrously brutal world. I think it is possible. I don't want to have a breath of hate, jealousy, anxiety or fear in me. I want to live completely at peace. Which doesn't mean that I want to die. I want to live on this marvellous earth, so full, so rich, so beautiful. I want to look at the trees, flowers, rivers, meadows, women, boys and girls, and at the same time live completely at peace with myself and with the world. What can I do?

 If we know how to look at violence, not only outwardly in society - the wars, the riots, the national antagonisms and class conflicts - but also in ourselves, then perhaps we shall be able to go beyond it.

Here is a very complex problem. For centuries upon centuries man has been violent; religions have tried to tame him throughout the world and none of them have succeeded. So if we are going into the question we must, it seems to me, be at least very serious about it because it will lead us into quite a different domain, but if we want merely to play with the problem for intellectual entertainment we shall not get very far.

You may feel that you yourself are very serious about the problem but that as long as so many other people in the world are not serious and are not prepared to do anything about it, what is the good of your doing anything? I don't care whether they take it seriously or not. I take it seriously, that is enough. I am not my brother's keeper. I myself, as a human being, feel very strongly about this question of violence and I will see to it that in myself I am not violent - but I cannot tell you or anybody else, `Don't be violent.' It has no meaning - unless you yourself want it. So if you yourself really want to understand this problem of violence let us continue on our journey of exploration together.

Is this problem of violence out there or here? Do you want to solve the problem in the outside world or are you questioning violence itself as it is in you? If you are free of violence in yourself the question is, `How am I to live in a world full of violence, acquisitiveness, greed, envy, brutality? Will I not be destroyed?' That is the inevitable question which is invariably asked. When you ask such a question it seems to me you are not actually living peacefully. If you live peacefully you will have no problem at all. You may be imprisoned because you refuse to join the army or shot because you refuse to fight - but that is not a problem; you will be shot. it is extraordinarily important to understand this.

We are trying to understand violence as a fact, not as an idea, as a fact which exists in the human being, and the human being is myself. And to go into the problem I must be completely vulnerable, open, to it. I must expose myself to myself - not necessarily expose myself to you because you may not be interested - but I must be in a state of mind that demands to see this thing right to the end and at no point stops and says I will go no further.

Now it must be obvious to me that I am a violent human being. I have experienced violence in anger, violence in my sexual demands, violence in hatred, creating enmity, violence in jealousy and so on - I have experienced it, I have known it, and I say to myself, `I want to understand this whole problem not just one fragment of it expressed in war, but this aggression in man which also exists in the animals and of which I am a part.'

Violence is not merely killing another. It is violence when we use a sharp word, when we make a gesture to brush away a person, when we obey because there is fear. So violence isn't merely organized butchery in the name of God, in the name of society or country. Violence is much more subtle, much deeper, and we are inquiring into the very depths of violence.

When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind.

Now there are two primary schools of thought with regard to violence, one which says, `Violence is innate in man' and the other which says, `Violence is the result of the social and cultural heritage in which man lives.' We are not concerned with which school we belong to - it is of no importance. What is important is the fact that we are violent, not the reason for it.

One of the most common expressions of violence is anger. When my wife or sister is attacked I say I am righteously angry; when my country is attacked, my ideas, my principles, my way of life, I am righteously angry. I am also angry when my habits are attacked or my petty little opinions. When you tread on my toes or insult me I get angry, or if you run away with my wife and I get jealous, that jealousy is called righteous because she is my property. And all this anger is morally justified. But to kill for my country is also justified. So when we are talking about anger, which is a part of violence, do we look at anger in terms of righteous and unrighteous anger according to our own inclinations and environmental drive, or do we see only anger? Is there righteous anger ever? Or is there only anger? There is no good influence or bad influence, only influence, but when you are influenced by something which doesn't suit me I call it an evil influence.

The moment you protect your family, your country, a bit of coloured rag called a flag, a belief, an idea, a dogma, the thing that you demand or that you hold, that very protection indicates anger. So can you look at anger without any explanation or justification, without saying, `I must protect my goods', or `I was right to be angry', or `How stupid of me to be angry'? Can you look at anger as if it were something by itself? Can you look at it completely objectively, which means neither defending it nor condemning it? Can you?

Can I look at you if I am antagonistic to you or if I am thinking what a marvellous person you are? I can see you only when I look at you with a certain care in which neither of these things is involved. Now, can I look at anger in the same way, which means that I am vulnerable to the problem, I do not resist it, I am watching this extraordinary phenomenon without any reaction to it?

It is very difficult to look at anger dispassionately because it is a part of me, but that is what I am trying to do. Here I am, a violent human being, whether I am black, brown, white or purple. I am not concerned with whether I have inherited this violence or whether society has produced it in me; all I am concerned with is whether it is at all possible to be free from it. To be free from violence means everything to me. It is more important to me than sex, food, position, for this thing is corrupting me. It is destroying me and destroying the world, and I want to understand it, I want to be beyond it. I feel responsible for all this anger and violence in the world. I feel responsible - it isn't just a lot of words - and I say to myself, `I can do something only if I am beyond anger myself, beyond violence, beyond nationality'. And this feeling I have that I must understand the violence in myself brings tremendous vitality and passion to find out.

But to be beyond violence I cannot suppress it, I cannot deny it, I cannot say, `Well, it is a part of me and that's that', or `I don't want it'. I have to look at it, I have to study it, I must become very intimate with it and I cannot become intimate with it if I condemn it or justify it. We do condemn it, though; we do justify it. Therefore I am saying, stop for the time being condemning it or justifying it.

Now, if you want to stop violence, if you want to stop wars, how much vitality, how much of yourself, do you give to it? Isn't it important to you that your children are killed, that your sons go into the army where they are bullied and butchered? Don't you care? My God, if that doesn't interest you, what does? Guarding your money? Having a good time? Taking drugs? Don't you see that this violence in yourself is destroying your children? Or do you see it only as some abstraction?

All right then, if you are interested, attend with all your heart and mind to find out. Don't just sit back and say, `Well, tell us all about it'. I point out to you that you cannot look at anger nor at violence with eyes that condemn or justify and that if this violence is not a burning problem to you, you cannot put those two things away. So first you have to learn; you have to learn how to look at anger, how to look at your husband, your wife, your children; you have to listen to the politician, you have to learn why you are not objective, why you condemn or justify. You have to learn that you condemn and justify because it is part of the social structure you live in, your conditioning as a German or an Indian or a Negro or an American or whatever you happen to have been born, with all the dulling of the mind that this conditioning results in. To learn, to discover, something fundamental you must have the capacity to go deeply. If you have a blunt instrument, a dull instrument, you cannot go deeply. So what we are doing is sharpening the instrument, which is the mind - the mind which has been made dull by all this justifying and condemning. You can penetrate deeply only if your mind is as sharp as a needle and as strong as a diamond. It is no good just sitting back and asking, `How am I to get such a mind?' You have to want it as you want your next meal, and to have it you must see that what makes your mind dull and stupid is this sense of invulnerability which has built walls round itself and which is part of this condemnation and justification. If the mind can be rid of that, then you can look, study, penetrate, and perhaps come to a state that is totally aware of the whole problem.

So let us come back to the central issue - is it possible to eradicate violence in ourselves? It is a form of violence to say, `You haven't changed, why haven't you?' I am not doing that. It doesn't mean a thing to me to convince you of anything. It is your life, not my life. The way you live is your affair. I am asking whether it is possible for a human being living psychologically in any society to clear violence from himself inwardly? If it is, the very process will produce a different way of living in this world.

Most of us have accepted violence as a way of life. Two dreadful wars have taught us nothing except to build more and more barriers between human beings that is, between you and me. But for those of us who want to be rid of violence, how is it to be done? I do not think anything is going to be achieved through analysis, either by ourselves or by a professional. We might be able to modify ourselves slightly, live a little more quietly with a little more affection, but in itself it will not give total perception. But I must know how to analyse which means that in the process of analysis my mind becomes extraordinarily sharp, and it is that quality of sharpness, of attention, of seriousness, which will give total perception. One hasn't the eyes to see the whole thing at a glance; this clarity of the eye is possible only if one can see the details, then jump. Some of us, in order to rid ourselves of violence, have used a concept, an ideal, called non-violence, and we think by having an ideal of the opposite to violence, non-violence, we can get rid of the fact, the actual - but we cannot. We have had ideals without number, all the sacred books are full of them, yet we are still violent - so why not deal with violence itself and forget the word altogether?

If you want to understand the actual you must give your whole attention, all your energy, to it. That attention and energy are distracted when you create a fictitious, ideal world. So can you completely banish the ideal? The man who is really serious, with the urge to find out what truth is, what love is, has no concept at all. He lives only in what is.

To investigate the fact of your own anger you must pass no judgement on it, for the moment you conceive of its opposite you condemn it and therefore you cannot see it as it is. When you say you dislike or hate someone that is a fact, although it sounds terrible. If you look at it, go into it completely, it ceases, but if you say, `I must not hate; I must have love in my heart', then you are living in a hypocritical world with double standards. To live completely, fully, in the moment is to live with what is, the actual, without any sense of condemnation or justification - then you understand it so totally that you are finished with it. When you see clearly the problem is solved.

But can you see the face of violence clearly - the face of violence not only outside you but inside you, which means that you are totally free from violence because you have not admitted ideology through which to get rid of it? This requires very deep meditation not just a verbal agreement or disagreement.

You have now read a series of statements but have you really understood? Your conditioned mind, your way of life, the whole structure of the society in which you live, prevent you from looking at a fact and being entirely free from it immediately. You say, `I will think about it; I will consider whether it is possible to be free from violence or not. I will try to be free.' That is one of the most dreadful statements you can make, `I will try'. There is no trying, no doing your best. Either you do it or you don't do it. You are admitting time while the house is burning. The house is burning as a result of the violence throughout the world and in yourself and you say, `Let me think about it. Which ideology is best to put out the fire?' When the house is on fire, do you argue about the colour of the hair of the man who brings the water?

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