A businessperson, businessman, or businesswoman is an individual who has founded, owns, or holds shares in (including as an

angel investor An angel investor (also known as a business angel, informal investor, angel funder, private investor, or seed investor) is an individual who provides capital for a business or businesses start-up, usually in exchange for convertible debt or owners ...

) a

private-sector The private sector is the part of the economy, sometimes referred to as the citizen sector, which is owned by private groups, usually as a means of establishment for profit or non profit, rather than being owned by the government. Employment The ...

company. A businessperson undertakes activities (commercial or industrial) for the purpose of generating

cash flow A cash flow is a real or virtual movement of money: *a cash flow in its narrow sense is a payment (in a currency), especially from one central bank account to another; the term 'cash flow' is mostly used to describe payments that are expected ...

, sales, and revenue by using a combination of

human Humans (''Homo sapiens'') are the most abundant and widespread species of primate, characterized by bipedalism and exceptional cognitive skills due to a large and complex brain. This has enabled the development of advanced tools, culture, ...

financial Finance is the study and discipline of money, currency and capital assets. It is related to, but not synonymous with economics, the study of production, distribution, and consumption of money, assets, goods and services (the discipline of fina ...

, intellectual, and physical capital with a view to fueling economic development and growth.

History

Prehistoric period: Traders

Since a "businessman" can mean anyone in industry or commerce, businesspeople have existed as long as industry and commerce have existed. "Commerce" can simply mean "trade", and trade has existed through all of recorded history. The first businesspeople in human history were traders or merchants.

Medieval period: Rise of the merchant class

Merchants emerged as a "class" in medieval Italy (compare, for example, the Vaishya, the traditional merchant caste in Indian society). Between 1300 and 1500, modern accounting, the

bill of exchange A negotiable instrument is a document guaranteeing the payment of a specific amount of money, either on demand, or at a set time, whose payer is usually named on the document. More specifically, it is a document contemplated by or consisting of a ...

, and limited liability were invented, and thus the world saw "the first true bankers", who are certainly businesspeople. Around the same time, Europe saw the "emergence of rich merchants." This "rise of the merchant class" came as Europe "needed a middleman" for the first time, and these "burghers" or "

bourgeois The bourgeoisie ( , ) is a social class, equivalent to the middle or upper middle class. They are distinguished from, and traditionally contrasted with, the proletariat by their affluence, and their great cultural and financial capital. They ...

" were the people who played this role.

Renaissance to Enlightenment: Rise of the capitalist

Europe became the dominant global commercial power in the 16th century, and as Europeans developed new tools for business, new types of "business people" began to use those tools. In this period, Europe developed and used paper money, cheques, and joint-stock companies (and their shares of

stock In finance, stock (also capital stock) consists of all the shares by which ownership of a corporation or company is divided.Longman Business English Dictionary: "stock - ''especially AmE'' one of the shares into which ownership of a company ...

). Developments in actuarial science and underwriting led to insurance. Together, these new tools were used by a new kind of businessperson, the capitalist. These people owned or financed businesses as investors, but they were not merchants of goods. These capitalists were a major force in the Industrial Revolution. The Oxford English Dictionary notes the earliest known use of the word "business-men" in 1798, and of "business-man" in 1803. By 1860 the spelling "businessmen" had emerged.

Modern period: Rise of the business magnate

The newest kind of corporate executive working under a

business magnate A business magnate, also known as a tycoon, is a person who has achieved immense wealth through the ownership of multiple lines of enterprise. The term characteristically refers to a powerful entrepreneur or investor who controls, through perso ...

is the

manager Management (or managing) is the administration of an organization, whether it is a business, a nonprofit organization, or a government body. It is the art and science of managing resources of the business. Management includes the activities o ...

. One of the first true founders of management profession was

Robert Owen Robert Owen (; 14 May 1771 – 17 November 1858) was a Welsh textile manufacturer, philanthropist and social reformer, and a founder of utopian socialism and the cooperative movement. He strove to improve factory working conditions, promoted e ...

(1771–1858). He was also a

in Scotland. He studied the "problems of

productivity Productivity is the efficiency of production of goods or services expressed by some measure. Measurements of productivity are often expressed as a ratio of an aggregate output to a single input or an aggregate input used in a production proces ...

and

motivation Motivation is the reason for which humans and other animals initiate, continue, or terminate a behavior at a given time. Motivational states are commonly understood as forces acting within the agent that create a disposition to engage in goal-dire ...

", and was followed by Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856–1915), who was the first person who studied work with the motive to train his

staff Staff may refer to: Pole * Staff, a weapon used in stick-fighting ** Quarterstaff, a European pole weapon * Staff of office, a pole that indicates a position * Staff (railway signalling), a token authorizing a locomotive driver to use a particula ...

in the field of management to make them efficient managers capable of managing his business. After World War I, management became popular due to the example of Herbert Hoover and the

Harvard Business School Harvard Business School (HBS) is the graduate business school of Harvard University, a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. It is consistently ranked among the top business schools in the world and offers a large full-time MBA p ...

, which offered degrees in business administration (management) with the motive to develop efficient managers so that business magnates can hire them with the goal to increase productivity of the private establishments business magnates own.

Salary

Salaries for businesspeople vary. The salaries of businesspeople can be as high as billions of dollars per year. For example, the owner of Microsoft, Bill Gates makes $4 billion per year. The high salaries which businesspeople earn have often been a source of criticism from many who believe they are paid excessively.

Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of 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 a person who sets up a business or businesses.

References

{{Authority control Business occupations * Entrepreneurship