I agree, since you brought up the question of the difference between the definitions, that it does matter - however, being an entrepreneur means that you are taking on a new endeavor - maybe it's just new to the entrepreneur. If you are starting your own business or buying a small business, you are an entrepreneur - you're undertaking something huge, with tons of risk. The majority of people who attempt this do so because they don't want to work for anyone else but themselves. The idea that they will be one of the key drivers of that business is the essence of entrepreneurship. So I don't think you can make the differentiation between small business owner and entrepreneur so cleanly.

Having said that, I think your analysis that entrepreneurship is a personality trait and not a job title is astute, and we might agree that if you're either running a dry cleaning business with one store and one employee or the CEO of Google, you have an equal chance to be an entrepreneur as long as your business is constantly innovating with an eye to the future (this may be how you were talking about growth), but I think it is disingenuous to say that small business owners are not entrepreneurs - they are so by the act of starting a business.

I have to disagree with you - these folks, such professionals as doctors, lawyers, CPAs, etc. might be starting into an established field of business, with well established business rules, processes, best practices, etc. but they are still striking out on their own - assuming risk and trying to generate a customer base and creating something that wasn't there before. That takes an entrepreneurial spirit even if it isn't a ground-breaking industry, business model, or new product or service. It's about the risk and about building something new - even if it isn't different. These folks are just as deserving of the moniker of entrepreneur, even if I wouldn't necessarily invest in them if I were a venture capitalist.

What I think you're trying to point out is that there is a spirit or practice of innovation, of constant growth or evolution that defines the entrepreneur, which I agree with. However, there comes a point for some innovators where 'business-as-usual' takes over - maybe that's where they are in the market and the business's growth cycle - maybe it's one professional who wanted to start their own practice and leave it at that - just because these individuals and business cease to innovate doesn't mean that the spirit in which they undertook the endeavor was any less entrepreneurial than the spirit that continues to drive other companies to constantly evolve.

This is a very interesting subject, thanks for posting it.

I like your post here about the term Serial Entrepreneur - and I agree that it's not a very good job title - it says to me that the person adheres to a model of entrepreneurship such as finding an idea, building a startup - financing it, scaling it - and then selling it off. This makes me think that the person is more interested in the idea - the project - and money than being a part of a business that is truly innovative such as Microsoft or Google, whose founders and key innovators have kept pushing for the next great development and stuck with the business. As you said, if entrepreneurship is a lifestyle or personality type, why not stick with it and keep innovating? They might sell off their business for the same reason a startup changes its culture to allow operations to catch up with growth - goals change, cultures change, peoples' lives change, priorities change.

To look at it from another angle: Large businesses can still foster entrepreneurship, and the successful ones often do. Are we to exclude the individuals who are doing the innovating within these larger organizations? These people who might be developing a new segment of their business to open new markets are just as entrepreneurial as the startup entrepreneur - they are taking significant risk to their careers if they fail, too.

The list of traits you linked to is from the Small Business Administration, but are these traits accurate? Are they focused on traits of the entrepreneur or the small business owner? It would be interesting to know more about studies done on the personalities of entrepreneurs. For instance, check out this post about entrepreneurial traits. Is it any more accurate or believable than the one on the SBA website (http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2009/01/25/how-to-decide-if-you-should...) or this website (http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2008/10/26/quiz-are-you-the-entreprene...)?

Can we honestly say that there are definite personality traits that all entrepreneurs share? If so, can these traits dictate (or at least inform us of) entrepreneurial success? (Really wish I could say yes to this one)

So I think there are a lot of things to consider here - risk, goals (personal and professional), previous success, individual and team personalities/cultures, passion - in understanding what actually defines an entrepreneur.

I think it's an excellent exercise to try and refine your ideas here. There is obviously a lot of content to explore.

Look forward to discussing this further - good luck with your posts!

Tom, I still believe that small businesses aren't always entrepreneurial. It depends on whether or not you buy into the fact that being an entrepreneur is a state of mind or you use its literal translation ("to undertake"). I was poking around and found this presentation by Jeff Housenbold, the CEO of Shutterfly: http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=1979. He hits on exactly what I'm trying to describe.

By no means do I want to discount the efforts of small business owners. I believe that they take on a significant amount of risk and contribute an enormous amount to our economy. But does recreating something that has been done thousands of times before make you an entrepreneur? I don't believe so.

I really think the problem is that we lack concise terms that differentiate those who start sustainable small businesses and those who really strive to create new products and markets and everything gets lumped into entrepreneurship. But everyone seems to believe that there is some sort of difference, as stated by the initial responses to my tweet. We just don't know how to describe it.

Here is my preferred definition of Entrepreneurship. Though it is academic, long, and not immediately accessible, it employs a framework that captures some of the most important ideas central to entrepreneurship. In this sense it is both flexible and thorough.

The Promise of Enterpreneurship as a Field of Research Author(s): Scott Shane and S. Venkataraman Source: The Academy of Management Review, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Jan., 2000), pp. 217-226 Published by: Academy of Management Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/259271 Accessed: 31/01/2009 04:58

DEFINITION OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP Perhaps the largest obstacle in creating a con- ceptual framework for the entrepreneurship field has been its definition. To date, most re- searchers have defined the field solely in terms of who the entrepreneur is and what he or she does (Venkataraman, 1997). The problem with this approach is that entrepreneurship involves the nexus of two phenomena: the presence of lucrative opportunities and the presence of en- terprising individuals (Venkataraman, 1997). By defining the field in terms of the individual alone, entrepreneurship researchers have gen- erated incomplete definitions that do not with- stand the scrutiny of other scholars (Gartner, 1988).

The definition of an entrepreneur as a person who establishes a new organization is an exam- ple of this problem. Because this definition does not include consideration of the variation in the quality of opportunities that different people identify, it leads researchers to neglect to mea- sure opportunities. Consequently, empirical support (or lack of support) for attributes that differentiate entrepreneurs from other members of society is often questionable, because these attributes confound the influence of opportuni- ties and individuals.

In contrast to previous research, we define the field of entrepreneurship as the scholarly exam- ination of how, by whom, and with what effects opportunities to create future goods and ser- vices are discovered, evaluated, and exploited (Venkataraman, 1997). Consequently, the field involves the study of sources of opportunities; the processes of discovery, evaluation, and ex- ploitation of opportunities; and the set of indi- viduals who discover, evaluate, and exploit them.

Although the phenomenon of entrepreneur- ship provides research questions for many dif- ferent scholarly fields,1 organization scholars are fundamentally concerned with three sets of research questions about entrepreneurship: (1) why, when, and how opportunities for the creation of goods and services come into exis- tence; (2) why, when, and how some people and not others discover and exploit these opportuni- ties; and (3) why, when, and how different modes of action are used to exploit entrepreneurial op- portunities.

Before reviewing existing research to answer these questions, we provide several caveats about our approach. First, we take a disequilib- rium approach, which differs from equilibrium approaches in economics (Khilstrom & Laffont, 1979) and social psychology (McClelland, 1961). In equilibrium models, entrepreneurial opportu- nities either do not exist or are assumed to be randomly distributed across the population. Be- cause people in equilibrium models cannot dis- cover opportunities that differ in value from those discovered by others, who becomes an entrepreneur in these models depends solely on the attributes of people. For example, in Khilstrom and Laffont's (1979) equilibrium model, entrepreneurs are people who prefer un- certainty.

Although we believe that some dimensions of equilibrium models are useful for understand- ing entrepreneurship, we argue that these mod- els are necessarily incomplete. Entrepreneurial behavior is transitory (Carroll & Mosakowski, 1987). Moreover, estimates of the number of peo- ple who engage in entrepreneurial behavior range from 20 percent of the population (Reyn- olds & White, 1997) to over 50 percent (Aldrich & Zimmer, 1986). Since a large and diverse group of people engage in the transitory process of entrepreneurship, it is improbable that entrepre- neurship can be explained solely by reference to a characteristic of certain people independent of the situations in which they find themselves. Therefore, when we argue that some people and 'For example, economists are interested in the distribu- tion of entrepreneurial talent across productive and unpro- ductive activities (Baumol, 1996).
2000 Shane and Venkataraman 219 not others engage in entrepreneurial behavior, we are describing the tendency of certain peo- ple to respond to the situational cues of oppor- tunities-not a stable characteristic that differ- entiates some people from others across all situations.2
Second, we argue that entrepreneurship does not require, but can include, the creation of new organizations. As Amit, Glosten, and Mueller (1993) and Casson (1982) explain, entrepreneur- ship can also occur within an existing organiza- tion. Moreover, opportunities can be sold to other individuals or to existing organizations. In this note we do not examine the creation of new organizations per se but, rather, refer interested readers to excellent reviews on firm creation in organizational ecology (Aldrich, 1990; Singh & Lumsden, 1990), economics (Caves, 1998; Geroski, 1995), and organizational theory (Gart- ner, 1985; Katz & Gartner, 1988; Low & MacMil- Iaxn, 1988).3
Third, our framework complements sociologi- cal and economic work in which researchers have examined the population-level factors that influence firm creation. Stinchcombe (1965) iden- tified societal factors that enhance incentives to organize and organizing ability. Aldrich (1990) and Singh and Lumsden (1990) have provided reviews of factors enhancing firm foundings and have described the effects of such factors as environmental carrying capacity, interpopula- tion processes, and institutional factors. Simi- larly, Baumol (1996) has related the institutional environment to the supply of people who are willing to create firms.
Although these other frameworks are valu- able to entrepreneurship scholars, they involve a set of issues different from those with which we are concerned. Our framework differs from these in that (1) we focus on the existence, dis- covery, and exploitation of opportunities; (2) we examine the influence of individuals and oppor- tunities, rather than environmental antecedents and consequences; and (3) we consider a frame- work broader than firm creation.
Fourth, our f ramework also complements re- search on the process of firm creation (e.g., Gart- ner, 1985; Katz & Gartner, 1988; Katz, 1993). Ex- plaining this process is important, but research on it involves examining a different set of issues from those we explore. Firm creation process researchers examine resource mobilization, firm organizing, and market making, starting with the assumption that opportunities exist, have been discovered, and will be exploited through the creation of new firms. Since we lack the space to review both the processes of entrepre- neurship through market mechanisms and through firm creation, we limit our discussion to the conditions under which entrepreneurial op- portunities are exploited through firms and mar- kets, and we refer readers to these other frame- works for information on the process of firm creation.

Isaac hit on something about this topic that has been bothering me all weekend. We can't reserve the label entrepreneur for only the Fords and the Corcs, or only for ground-breaking innovators, or, for that matter, only scalable businesses or a business idea that will revolutionize. Small business owners might innovate constantly within their own business, but those innovations may not be portable or scalable, but the owner of that business is still pushing for the next evolution of their store even if the result is not revolutionary. Thanks for making that point Isaac.

I think I agree w/ you Dale. Not all small business owners think like entrepreneurs.

In the Silicon Valley, entrepreneurship is often in the context of Internet startups and high-growth ventures, not SMBs.

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Christy, thanks for adding a personal perspective to things. I haven't found too many real world examples to back this up and a lot of it comes from speculation on my part.

To everyone else, thank you again for all the comments. This discussion has been very rewarding.