What is an 'Entrepreneur' anyway?

I began writing the what is “x” anyway series to examine words that have become so ubiquitous as to render them useless. I look at academic definitions and layer in more recent observations. This week I tackle the ever magnetic “entrepreneur”.

The word entrepreneur comes from an early 19th century French word entreprendre meaning to undertake. Joseph Schumpeter is credited as the major theorist on entrepreneurship in the 20th century. He argues that an entrepreneur is “the doer of new things or the doing of things that are already being done in a new way". Compare this with the common dictionary definition that is “a person who organises and operates a business, taking on greater than normal financial risks in order to do so”

I attribute much of the confusion today to a conflation of both contexts of entrepreneurship and value judgements of what an entrepreneur “should” be. Entrepreneurs operate businesses that are small or large, high growth, funded, bootstrapped, provide products and/or service. These are contexts.

The distinctions lie in the mindset and the "doing". Digging further into Schumpeter’s work, he describes an entrepreneur as:

“a man/woman of action who does not accept reality as it is”

Modernists put it more simply and perhaps less eloquently as one who “sees the need and fills it”. Note that it is only a minority that see the need or ways of doing new things in the first instance.

Those who then take action and convert the opportunity into a business are an even smaller minority. If we link this to the dictionary definition above, this process requires committing resources financial and otherwise in the face of uncertainty and risk. This commitment is where I see the main distinction and what is more beautifully known as putting your ass on the line. Or if you prefer sports terms, playing on the courts vs. watching from the stands.

Looking at the word through the lens of mindset and process is a more holistic and useful approach versus restricting its use within thresholds of revenues, growth rates, product types etc. The uniting factor above all definitions which resonated most strongly for me was in fact something I heard from a writer - when you see the opportunity, you can't not do it.

Follow me on twitter @kajalnycmba and LinkedIn for more on the “what is anyway” series. I am on a quest to help the best European entrepreneurs successfully expand their businesses to the US.