Has concept, vision, dream Ability to translate dream into products and people within an organizational context Able

to champion the concept to a wide range of publics and partners Adapt concept to reflect realities in environment Persevere in overcoming obstacles

Fill multiple roles Demonstrate multiple characteristics:

Visionary Leader and promoter Risk-taker Leverager of resources Networker and adapter

Responsible for adopting a business concept within an organizational context Fit between business concept and opportunity
Sole proprietorship, franchise, venture team, etc.

Willingness and ability to assume and manage risks

more critical with new-to-the-world products

Political skills important in large corporate settings Adaptability and persistence are bigger factors in turbulent environments

Immigrant populations produce more entrepreneurship per capita than nonimmigrant populations opportunistic mindset? Birth order first-born given more responsibility, confront more discipline, deal with more ambiguity Age correlated with education and experience
Entrepreneurs tend to have more education than managers

1. Motivation driven by range of factors

Necessity (survival) Dissatisfaction (cant stand job) Curiosity (What if?) Material gain (We could make a killing)

Achievement oriented more than anything else Driven by the task, challenge, opportunity Money as a by-product, but scorecard 2. Strong internal locus of control change agents Believe they can change their environments

3. Calculated risk-takers

4. High tolerance of ambiguity

Pursuit of a course of action with a reasonable chance of costly failure Attempt to estimate likelihood and magnitude of key risk factors and manage or mitigate them through good planning or decisions Process can be loose, messy, shift directions

Prize their independence self-motivated, self-reliant, prefer autonomy, have perseverance

Versatile Persuasive Creative Well-organized Hard-working Competitive

Excessive need for control

Tendency to micromanage

Suspicious others will steal their idea Impatience Need for applause Defensive Externalize internal problems

Traits are product of specific developments in social, economic and family environments Role models inside or outside of the family also play some role in entrepreneurship. Gender does not have strong influence in entrepreneurial orientation. Support system available from the family and financial and other institutions also plays role in entreprneurship.

Craftsmen
Narrow in education/training

Opportunists
Breadth in education/training, wide experiences

Technical entrepreneur
Come up with own inventions and product modifications, work experience in technology environment, more formal technical education Make greater use of teams

Can be categorized as:

Personal achiever Super salesperson Real manager Expert idea generator

Within organizations as well, it is the freedom granted to individuals and teams who can exercise their creativity and champion promising ideas that is needed for entrepreneurship to occur. Thus, an important impetus for new-entry activity is the independent spirit necessary to further new ventures. As such, the concept of autonomy is a key dimension of an entrepreneurial orientation.

Entrepreneurship has flourished because independently minded people elected to leave secure positions in order to promote novel ideas or venture into new markets, rather than allow organizational superiors and processes to inhibit them.

Schumpeter was among the first to emphasize the role of innovation in the entrepreneurial process. He outlined an economic process of "creative destruction," by which wealth was created when existing market structures were disrupted by the introduction of new goods or services that shifted resources away from existing firms and caused new firms to grow.

The key to this cycle of activity was entrepreneurship: the competitive entry of innovative "new combinations" that propelled the dynamic evolution of the economy. Thus "innovativeness" became an important factor used to characterize entrepreneurship.

The early entrepreneurship literature equated the idea of entrepreneurship with working for oneself (i.e., seeking self-employment rather than working for someone else for wages). Along with this type of work came the idea of assuming personal risk.

Cantillon, who was the first to formally use the term entrepreneurship, argued that the principal factor that separated entrepreneurs from hired employees was the uncertainty and riskiness of self-employment. Thus, the concept of risk taking is a quality that is frequently used to describe entrepreneurship.

Economics scholars since Schumpeter have emphasized the importance of initiative in the entrepreneurial process. Penrose argued that entrepreneurial managers are important to the growth of firms because they provide the vision and imagination necessary to engage in opportunistic expansion. Lieberman and Montgomery emphasized the importance of first-mover advantage as the best strategy for capitalizing on a market opportunity.

By exploiting asymmetries in the marketplace, the first mover can capture unusually high profits and get a head start on establishing brand recognition. Thus, taking initiative by anticipating and pursuing new opportunities and by participating in emerging markets also has become associated with entrepreneurship. This fourth characteristic of entrepreneurship is often referred to as proactiveness.

Entrepreneurship is a bottom-up process it begins with people There is no single prototype of the entrepreneur
Some general traits that entrepreneurs tend to have more in common with each other than corporate managers, government administrators or other groups General categories emerge for entrepreneurs