“Are You an Inventor or an Entrepreneur?”

- Harvard Business Publishing

I am most definitely not an inventor but an entrepreneur…

Over the past couple years I’ve given a lot of thought to whether I consider myself an entrepreneur. Sure, I’ve started a handful of businesses but is that indicative of being an entrepreneur? To some perhaps but it takes a lot more than “starting” a company to be considered an entrepreneur. So I decided to see what the world has to say about the characteristics of an entrepreneur; vision, tenacity, sensibility, progressive, calculating, individualist, planner and the list goes on and on. I did, however, learn a bit about the history of the entrepreneur and how the view of an entrepreneur has changed over time.

History At A Glance

Jean-Babtiste Say, a 19th century economis, is believed to have been the first to coin the term “entrepreneur” around 1800. The definition of entrepreneur stems from the French word entreprendre to undertake and when broken down; entre “to enter” and prendre “to take”.

To summarize, over the past 20 years or so there has been a lot of research on the characteristics of an entrepreneur. Generally speaking there was a fixation with predicting whether an individual would be a successful entrepreneur based on their personality characteristics, cultural influences and life experiences. What I found particularly interesting is the fact that recent research has shown results that counter the “person-centric-cowboy characteristics”, instead research is shedding light on the fact that entrepreneurs don’t work in soloist silo’s but in collaborative social environments. As I mulled it over it seemed quite obvious; while individual personality characteristics certainly play a role in defining entrepreneurship, equally important are the social aspects that are oftentimes overlooked (For more info Read Characteristics of the Entrepreneur: Social Creatures, Not Solo Heroes). Why that wasn’t readily apparent from the start is beyond me because I’ve grown up and was educated in the “there is no ‘I’ in team” system. That said, culturally the U.S. is one of , if not the, most individualistic environments in the world, so it makes me wonder what characteristics of entrepreneurship exist in a place like China.

Common Definition of Entrepreneurship

“Entrepreneurship is the process of creating or seizing an opportunity and pursuing it regardless of the resources currently controlled”      — Timmons, J.A. 1994. New Venture Creation: Entrepreneurship for the 21st Century.

Despite what you may have heard or think about China or Communism in general, I think China as a country is hyper-entrepreneurial. If the essence of entrepreneurship, as Timmons points out, really is about creating or seizing opportunity regardless of resources controlled, then China is the entrepreneur poster child. Oddly what is striking about Chinese entrepreneurs isn’t that they’re soloists, on the contrary, the fabric of their society revolves around relationships, far beyond anything we have here in the U.S. Due to China’s sociopolitical and legal environment Chinese entrepreneurs are anything but individualistic. Sure, there some soloist characteristics but at the root Chinese entrepreneurs understand that being well networked is an absolute requirement for success. My intent isn’t to drag you into a scholarly examination of Chinese entrepreneurship (Read Liao and Sohmen’s “The Development of Modern Entrepreneurship in China”) but simply to draw the parallel to the concept of ‘social creatures‘.

After a couple hours of research and a lot of thought, I was still contemplating whether I’m an entrepreneur. If popular opinion was any indication there would be a resounding “yes, Shawn is an entrepreneur”. I guess the issue I see is on a broader spectrum, I’ve always taken issue with categorizations regardless of how accurate or far flung they appear to be. Categorization to me is akin to wearing a wool sweater, comfortingly warm but boy does it itch, so with the phrase “If the shoe fits kid” ringing in my ears, I’ll submit albeit with some trepidation, yes I am an entrepreneur and most definitely not an inventor.