What is entrepreneurship?
Do you believe (as many people do) that entrepreneurship involves simply starting up and managing a small business? In fact, it is not that.
The concept of entrepreneurship developed in France in the 18th century - hence the use of the French word entrepreneur, which means roughly a "go-between." An entrepreneur is an innovator and organizer - not necessarily a manager or a capitalist. Typically, the capitalist (funder) bears most of the financial risk, the manager makes the business run, while the entrepreneur's function is more that of a strategist.
So an entrepreneur is not the same as a small business owner. Most businesses are not entrepreneurial, because they are not innovative.
An excellent, and clearly written) book explaining this in more detail is A General Theory of Entrepreneurship by Scott Shane (Edward Elgar, London, 2003). Shane explains the entrepreneurial process as involving these stages:
- identifying and evaluating opportunities
- deciding whether or not to exploit those opportunities
- making efforts to find resources
- organizing those resources into a business venture
- developing a strategy for the new venture.
Entrepreneurship links
Here are some other succinct web pages on the nature of entrepreneurship, with slight variations in their definitions:
By economist Murray N Rothbard (Ludwig von Mises Institute)
By the management consultancy Accenture
By Dan Beccue from the University of Illinois
By Paul Di-Masi (Global Development Research Center)
National Innovation Council, Australia
Brian Dabson, Texas Entrepreneurship Summit, 2005