Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value. With this definition, entrepreneurship is viewed as change, generally entailing risk beyond what is normally encountered in starting a business, which may include other values than simply economic ones.

An entrepreneur is an individual who creates and/or invests in one or more businesses, bearing most of the risks and enjoying most of the rewards. The process of setting up a business is known as "entrepreneurship". The entrepreneur is commonly seen as an innovator, a source of new ideas, goods, services, and business/or procedures.

More narrow definitions have described entrepreneurship as the process of designing, launching and running a new business, which is often similar to a small business, or as the "capacity and willingness to develop, organize and manage a business venture along with any of its risks to make a profit." The people who create these businesses are often referred to as "entrepreneurs". While definitions of entrepreneurship typically focus on the launching and running of businesses, due to the high risks involved in launching a start-up, a significant proportion of start-up businesses have to close due to "lack of funding, bad business decisions, government policies, an economic crisis, lack of market demand, or a combination of all of these."

In the field of economics, the term entrepreneur is used for an entity which has the ability to translate inventions or technologies into products and services. In this sense, entrepreneurship describes activities on the part of both established firms and new businesses.