The key definitions for the entrepreneur seem to centre around the concept of responsibility. Responsibility implies individualism. It is not tolerab… - Francis X. Sutton

Businessmen have not shied away from the responsibility implied in Emerson's famous definition of a business as the lengthening shadow of a man. They have readily brushed aside complications and assigned crucial importance to the decisions of the guiding executives.

Extravagance, inefficiency, and waste are inherent in government, because nothing which government does is forced to meet the test of the market. Further, government does not even meet the internal criteria of rationality which the balance sheet and the profit and loss statement impose on every individual business enterprise. The power of government to pay for itself through taxes and deficits, and to force on people things which they do not really want, deprives government activity of any semblance of restraint.

Characteristically, the factors determining, the outcome of business efforts are numerous, and difficult both to assess and control. The sale of goods on a more or less free market is, of course, one major source of these difficulties; the disposition of buyers are subject to only limited control and prediction. They in turn are influenced by those diffuse but important factors which go under the label of general business conditions. Even within the context of a given firm there may be conditions and possible courses of action (such as personal appointments, or the performance of certain equipment) which may be beyond ready prediction and control. A great part of the efforts of entrepreneurs is directed towards minimising uncertainties.