What is an Entrepreneur?

I signed up to the UK Business Forums the other day so that I could try and help people out and also get help when I need it. When looking around the posts on the forum I found quite few interesting ones that I wanted to join in with and one of them really caught my eye. By the title of the posts, you have probably guessed… ‘What is an Entrepreneur?’

Everyone seems to have different opinions on the matter and it got me thinking about what an entrepreneur actually involves. I had a look through a couple of business books that I own and I felt the following definition from my old AS Business Studies Bookwas a good starting point:

Individuals who have an idea that they develop by setting up a new business and encourage it to grow. They take the risk and the subsequent profits that come with success or the losses that come with failure.

I liked this definition because it didn’t really bring in any personality traits, which kept coming up in the forums thread that I was reading. Here is an example to what other people thought on the forums:

I have been thinking about this quite a lot recently. I find the nature/nurture debate really interesting – are entrepreneurs born or made?

I think good entrepreneurs have a number of distinct qualities:

Strong drive for responsibility
Focus on completing the task
Vigour and persistence in pursuit of goals
Originality in problem-solving
Drive to exercise initiative in social settings
Sense of personal identity
Willingness to accept consequences of decisions and actions
And above all self-belief.

My definition is along the lines of the first one, without nay clear personality traits, but I believe you have to have something unique:

I personally believe that you should think of the actual definition, but then also consider that nothing can be done without have a goal and a determination to get something out of how you are going to manage that goal.

I also like to think that an entrepreneur is someone who is quite unique, willing to think differently to everyone else (to gain an edge) and uses that edge and uniqueness to succeed. Well to be honest, the succeed bit doesn’t matter at all, you are still an entrepreneur if you fail every time… trying is everything.

Finally, I would like to present you with one of the posts I agreed with the most. This person says that the definition is based on opinion and that anyone really can be an entrepreneur. I believe this is something we should keep in mind as someone with great skill could be put off because they don’t meet any of the ‘standard’ definitions. If you have the determination, you can do anything.

I don’t believe there is specific ‘qualities’ that every entrepreneur needs to have, other than ambition, motivation and determination.

Many people on my course (enterprise and entrepreneurship degree) believe you need to be a people person, creative, a good networker etc. In my opinion these aren’t all needed, but desirable traits. I do think most entrepreneurs are willing to take risks – but a fool can also take risks and not be considered an ‘entrepreneur’.

I also think many entrepreneurs lack a lot of the normal ‘characteristics’ or ‘qualities’ but are excellent in finding others who can do the stuff they cannot. This is quite entrepreneurial IMO. It is all down to opinion.

From this post I wanted to give a few different opinions on what makes an entrepreneur and what others think about the subject matter. If you have your own opinions please post it in the comments section below.

I would also like to thank everyone who contributed to the thread on the UK Business Forums.

If you want to read more into the matter, this boo is highly recommended – The Illusions of Entrepreneurship