The course seeks to introduce the concepts of enterprise, innovation, small business and their interrelationships. It aims to provide a guide to the key facts, ideas, theories and thinking about enterprise and innovation, to look at their relationship to small businesses and to consider the methods that are taken to promote and finance them.The word enterprise is used in a variety of contexts with a wide range of meanings. Within this range there are narrow meanings of the word specifically related to business and there are wider meanings indicating a way of behaviour that can apply in a variety of contexts, including business. The narrower meanings are closely associated to entrepreneurship, and in turn, the concepts of enterprise and entrepreneurship embrace much that would be considered to be expressions of small business activity.
