An entrepreneur starts a business in order to
An entrepreneur creates new platforms in order to
An entrepreneur creates a new platform, taking responsibility for the risk involved, in order to
An entrepreneur organizes others around a new platform, taking responsibility for the risk involved, in order to
An entrepreneur recognizes opportunities for growth in society, then takes a risk to organize others around them, in order to
An entrepreneur organizes others around opportunities for growth in society, taking risks than others cannot or will not, in order to discover new forms of value.
An entrepreneur faces risk and adversity to organize others around opportunities for growth, creating something new that teaches us about unexplored forms of value.
An entrepreneur organizes others around opportunities for growth, facing risk and adversity to create a new thing and bring it to life in a way that teaches us all about an unexplored form of value.
An entrepreneur organizes others around opportunities for growth, facing risk and adversity to create new connections and bring them to life in a way that helps us all realize an unexplored form of value.
An entrepreneur builds new connections around opportunities for growth, bringing them to life in a way that is meaningful for others, then facing risk and adversity for the sake of helping us all realize a significant, unexplored form of value.
On December 9, we staged a Lab with the Academy for Entrepreneurial Leadership at the University of Illinois. We wanted to figure out how to inject the entrepreneurial spirit into the full range of human endeavors.
To prepare for the Lab, we talked with the Lab participants about how entrepreneurial innovation manifests in their fields, then used their answers to construct the definition above. Here’s what we learned from each of them:
The Psychologist: “I don’t like the ‘risk junkie’ theory of entrepreneurs. I think entrepreneurs go after high-stakes situations that are inherently risky. … They want to make an impact in a way that is satisfying, unique, useful, or lasting. Successful entrepreneurs think about a lot of different tactics in order to make something happen. They’re constantly conducting experiments. They realize that a number of their tactics are not going to be successful. But some of them will be.”
The Technology Strategist: “We all assume that a technology is developed and it is very powerful. But it is often the interaction with the market that actually makes the technology better and better. Technology in itself is useless, in my opinion. A lot of times we worry about technological feasibility without really thinking about whether the technology has business viability or fits consumer demand. … The great entrepreneurs are the people who are good at connecting the dots. You don’t have to invent anything new. There are lots of old ideas that are good. But are you able to find new users for those old ideas? That to me is the critical skill that you need.”
The Media Innovation Expert: “In the news and journalism space, the difference between innovation and entrepreneurship is very little. … Whether they are the ones who came up with the good idea or just identified it, entrepreneurs find the way to actually implement something. … Good journalists have a very good understanding of how the world works. They’ve spent their careers documenting how power moves, how regular people live their lives, how those people’s lives intersect with government. They have dealt with enough people to quickly read the logic patterns of society and say whether something actually make sense.”
The Arts Education Researcher: “I think of the word ‘animate’ or ‘animator.’ The one thing entrepreneurs have to do is create a sort of energy that makes things alive. If you are an animator, then you are able to recruit other people, to motivate other people. Entrepreneurs are able to animate a group of people or a project into a living organism, as opposed to a rigid bureaucracy.”
The Social Entrepreneur: “The mission of your company requires a lofty goal to create job satisfaction. One thing we say at our company is that we create unexpected joy. I think anyone in any field, whether you run a car wash or a hedge fund, can create unexpected joy for people. … It’s the unexpected. It’s that surprise element, that whimsical, magical element that makes things fun. Look at some of the great products that people love – they say, ‘It seems like magic.’ People like to be filled with wonder and brought back to being a kid, whether it’s a product or a service or an iPhone app.”
The Nonprofit Founder: “It’s important to instill passion, whether you’re working with a philanthropic or civic organization or whether you’re manufacturing ketchup caps. … Sometimes it’s not obvious. Sometimes you have to really stretch hard to help employees in for-profit companies find meaning. They have to understand that they are not just a cog in the wheel, that they are really helping to keep the doors open. … Entrepreneurs have the moxie to see through tremendous, paralyzing fear and bring their vision to reality. Then they rope others in with their passion.”
The Public Policy Professor: “One type of academic entrepreneur is the person who finds a research agenda, then moves the needle forward by gathering resources and creating institutions so that students or other researchers can continue to push in that area. … In the sciences especially, it’s became harder to do anything on your own. No one person has all the relevant information. … When students come to your institution, they may not be aware that you have an exciting new idea they should be working on. So you can’t just attract talent – you have to make talent.”
The Innovation Executive: “To me, the biggest difference I see between entrepreneurial companies and non-entrepreneurial companies is that the latter says, ‘We don’t do that’ or ‘It can’t be done’ and the former says, ‘We’re not sure, let us work on that and get back to you.’ Being an entrepreneur is wanting that challenge, wanting that risk. … There is a large number of adversarial things that are going to go against any entrepreneur. People have to understand that even if you have the greatest idea in the world, the odds of success are small. If you’re going to be scared, if you’re faint of hear, you’d better rethink this.”
The Information Specialist: “I see the role of business librarians as almost like information sherpas. We have had people literally say, ‘My friends laughed at my idea. My family laughed at my idea. But the librarian never laughed at me.’ … We should create an atmosphere where we respect people’s ideas as well as the thrill of the hunt. When you have an idea for a business and it hasn’t been done, why hasn’t it been done? Let’s find out. … Our society is so built on the idea that failing It is a also a very freeing thing to have the permission to fail. When you combine that with curiosity, you’ll learn more about what will work next time.”
The Entrepreneurial Educator: “There are many types of people who will put themselves at risk – a firefighter will run into a building burning. That is a kind of risk where there is an organizational structure built around it. In some ways the risk is managed by someone other than the individual, though that firefighter or police officer might be on the front lines of the risk. … Entrepreneurs are usually taking a risk in a space where there are people around them telling them, ‘There is a way to do this that is less risky.’ They are doing something that may not seem to be as socially acceptable. Part of what we need to do in this Lab is figure out how to show people that that type of risk needs to be socially acceptable, and that in fact we need people to take it just as much as we need people to be firefighters or police officers.”
The Digital Media Executive: “The people who make and preserve lasting value are often different from the people who break ground, who innovate, who pioneer. If you have too much of one or the other out there, things go out of balance. … I don’t think an entrepreneur’s job is to create lasting value. I think their value is blasting away at new ways of creating value. … I feel like entrepreneurs need to learn the value and difficulties of balancing budgets and doing financial modeling and all the stuff their numbers guy or girl is going to learn. But those CFO types, as well as the lawyers and the product managers and others who maintain value, should also learn the tools of the entrepreneur.”
The Foundation Executive: “Our most successful program officers and directors are asked to be entrepreneurs. Their purpose is to look at systems, then put together forces to make a change happen. They are trying to find opportunities and maximize success in those spaces. … What I have seen our best program officers do is to look at a system that is less than optimal, then see a big change that is happening in the world, then see how that change could have implications for the field that interests them and capitalize on ways for that change to affect that field.”
The Agency Founder: “You generate more innovative, less encumbered ideas if you are not constrained by pre-conceived models. Entrepreneurs have to be found in places where we are not normally looking – they are just as likely to be found among artists and liberal arts people as they are to be found among business school people. … Good designers and good entrepreneurs can think inside of their current context and then lift that up into a broader context. They can see whether a node in a system has support or influence, then determine whether it has virtue or detriment for the entire system around it, whether that is a business system or a social influence system or a communications system.”
The Publisher: “Part of the challenge that publishers and media have is that we have to create something new every day. If I keep telling you exactly the same thing, you’re going to tune me out. … To me, what a good entrepreneur does is go through a continual, iterative process of framing needs, products, services, or perspectives. That helps them see old things in a new way. … Most of the really great entrepreneurial ideas seem so obvious after the fact. You kick yourself because you didn’t come up with the same thing.”
The Public Servant: “In the public sector, mores than in the private sector, being entrepreneurial requires collaboration with one or more different sectors at the same time. Out of necessity, you seek out the best and the brightest from many different areas. … I think the best entrepreneurs are those who have a healthy dose of humility. They recognize that no matter how smart they are, there are people out there who can help them not only with investment, but with mentorships and partnerships. The best entrepreneurs are willing to ask for help on a regular basis.”
The Mentor: “An entrepreneur understands a risk, then takes that risk to build something that wasn’t there before. … People underappreciate the level of commitment entrepreneurs have to an idea. … There is a sense in the world that entrepreneurs are in it for the money, and certainly there are cases where they make money. But I think it’s overemphasized – the real thing that drives most entrepreneurs is the idea and how to execute that idea.”
The Media Strategist: “With respect to journalism, [an entrepreneur] can be someone who creates a new platform that he or she is producing. He or she would not only create the content, but publish it and figure out how to distribute it and monetize it in a self-sustaining way. … An application developer is thinking about the audience. Who is going to be consuming this content? How are they going to be using it? Journalists are not traditionally so concerned with the audience as creating the content. But if you’re being an entrepreneurial journalist, you have to care about both.”
Images: From left to right – childhood portraits of Thomas Edison, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Henry Ford.