What Does It Really Mean to Be an Entrepreneur?

There's a lot of pressure on us entrepreneurs these days. We've been painted as heroes, the folks who are going to rescue the economy. Yet, according to this post on the Harvard Business Review blog, this "heroic" view of entrepreneurs may be passe. The blog cites Oxford University's Marc Ventresca, who teaches technology, strategy, and organization at the Said Business School. Ventresca's perspective, as presented at TEDx Oxbridge, is that we "subscribe too heavily" to the idea of entrepreneur as hero, the one that purports "entrepreneurs take risks others refuse, freeing themselves from the bounds of convention."

Instead, according to Grant McCracken, a research affiliate at MIT and the blog's author, Ventresca defines entrepreneurs as "system builders" who create businesses by "marshaling, mobilizing, and connecting different worlds." Doesn't have quite the same ring to it, does it?

So, what say you? Are we innovators and risk-takers, or yentas and project managers? McCracken says we can be both. Sometimes, he asserts that "Ventresca's model applies," particularly when it comes to reinventing or "repurposing what exists." But McCracken says if you look at this "anthropologically," you see that the way entrepreneurs "think about the world, about the realm of the possible, the structure of a marketplace, the wants and needs of the consumer, all of these are formed by our culture. To invent new things, we are obliged to leave this culture and investigate a world that is relatively formless and strange."

Just the other day Rod Kurtz, my friend (and editor) at AOL Small Business, and I were discussing the definition of an entrepreneur. Kurtz, covering the world of entrepreneurs for a while now, says "there's no right answer" to that question, though he proposes that Richard Branson is as good a definition as it gets. And Branson, like McDonald's Ray Kroc before him, seems to have one foot firmly planted in each entrepreneurial camp -- he's at once a master repurposer and an explorer of new entrepreneurial realms.

I've been pondering this issue for quite some time. A few months ago I asked the members of Small Biz Nation, a community on LinkedIn (and a client) what their definition of "entrepreneur" was. Unsurprisingly, the answers were varied but contained the similar and familiar thread: entrepreneurs create things.

There were some interesting insights, too. Management consultant Susan Lannis said she learned in a business management class that that while "you can own a business, you [have to] be an entrepreneur." Bernie Beemster, the president of a water treatment company, said to really be an entrepreneur you have to have "both the ability to recognize the opportunity and the willingness to act." And Jeff Jones, a certified appraiser from Houston, said, "There are two factors which enable a person to go into business -- money and guts."

I think it's fair to say that some of us are driven to entrepreneurship because, to paraphrase Henry David Thoreau, "we march to the beat of a different drummer." We're driven to create and innovate because we're simply wired that way. Others, like Florida SCORE counselor Noel Pease, believe we become entrepreneurs because we "want power over our own working lives."

Maybe the problem lies with the word itself. Last week on his blog, Robert Jones called for a new term to replace the word "entrepreneur" and launched the "antipreneur movement." Jones proposes the word "venturer" as a substitute, saying that its definition (from the Random House Dictionary) proves the word worthy:

• (n) an undertaking involving uncertainty as to the outcome, especially a risky or dangerous one
• (v) to take a risk; dare; presume
• (adj) of or pertaining to an investment or investments in new businesses.

Other folks quickly weighed in. Tim Berry, the founder of Palo Alto Software and an entrepreneur by anyone's standard, suggests substituting the word "founder, as in startup founder" or empresario, which is Spanish for, well, entrepreneur.

My favorite definition of an entrepreneur comes from Doug Mellinger, the co-founder of Foundation Source, who once told me, "An entrepreneur is someone who will do anything to keep from getting a job."

I don't know about you, but most days I don't feel very heroic. While I'm more than willing to do my part, I think (with a hat tip to BNET blogger Kimberly Weisul) that it's high time everyone else -- big corporations, double-talking politicians, and the banks -- stepped up to the plate and contributed something as well.