Businesspeople

A businessperson is a person involved in business - in particular someone undertaking activities (commercial or industrial) for the purpose of generating cash flow, sales, and revenue utilizing a combination of human, financial, intellectual and physical capital with a view to fuelling economic development and growth. An entrepreneur is an example of a businessperson. The term "businessperson" may refer to founder, owner, or majority shareholder of a business or it can also be used to describe a high-level executive who does the everyday running and management of a business even though the executive is not the owner. The term may sometimes mean someone who is involved in an upper-level management role in a corporation, company, enterprise, firm, organization, or agency. This can especially apply to the founder, an owner, a manager, an executive, or an administrator in charge of total management of a corporation, company, organization, or agency.

Since a "businessman" can mean anyone in industry or commerce, businessmen 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 businessmen were traders, or merchants.

Merchants emerged as a "class" in medieval Italy. Between 1300 and 1500, modern accounting, the bill of exchange, and limited liability were invented, and thus the world saw "the first true bankers," who are certainly businessmen.

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