The entrepreneur and entrepreneurship—Operational definitions of their role in society. Paper presented at the annual International Council for Small Business conference

The role of the entrepreneur in society is difficult to establish if the concept of entrepreneurship is inadequately defined. This lack of a clear entrepreneurship paradigm poses problems for both policy makers and for academics. This paper proposes an operational definition of the entrepreneur and entrepreneurship, synthesizing past definitions into operationalizable constructs. Entrepreneurship is the pursuit of a discontinuous opportunity involving the creation of an organization (or sub-organization) with the expectation of value creation to the participants. The entrepreneur is the individual (or team) that identifies the opportunity, gathers the necessary resources, creates and is ultimately responsible for the performance of the organization. Therefore, entrepreneurship is the means by which new organizations are formed with their resultant job and wealth creation. A critical component of the proposed definition is the necessary condition that the organization created actually provides goods and/or services to society, not merely for internal consumption. Clearly this definition favors the behavioral school of thought on entrepreneurship, but it should not be taken to discount the importance of the traits and characteristics of the entrepreneur from the perspective of their propensity to act. Although growth, innovation, and tenacity to overcome hurdles are commonly cited as elements of entrepreneurship, we argue that these are consequences, not antecedents, to entrepreneurial activity