by Paul E. Zimmerman

Created on: December 20, 2006   Last Updated: February 26, 2007

What is entrepreneurship? Obviously, there's the dictionary definition of entrepreneurship, of course:

"entrepreneur

1. a person who organizes and manages any enterprise, esp. a business, usually
with considerable initiative and risk.
2. an employer of productive labor; contractor.
verb (used with object)
3. to deal with or initiate as an entrepreneur.
verb (used without object)

4. to act as an entrepreneur." (source: dictionary.com)

And then there's what I'll call the "experiential definition" of entrepreneurship; that is, how people understand entrepreneurship by experience.

I am an entrepreneur. I have taken on many personal business challenges in my short 31 years, from real estate, to being the owner/operator of a brick and mortar retail business, and I've even put time and capital into online businesses.

When I speak to people about these activities, I've noted that for those who have not ventured into these waters, risk dominates their understanding of entrepreneurial experience.

It is true that one takes risks in being an entrepreneur, because success is not guaranteed. Risks do come with rewards, however (or at least they do in free market economies not set upon by socialist/collectivist schemes), and so some of us choose to attempt to manage the dangers and pursue the rewards. In practice, this is what separates entrepreneurs from everyone else.

But note that in the dictionary definition of entrepreneurship, risk only appears in the first variant of the definition. In the others, "entrepreneurship" only refers to someone who undertakes entrepreneurial activity. Risk often accompanies entrepreneurial endeavors, but it is not necessarily a part of the definition.

Entrepreneurship improves people's lives. Through entrepreneurial initiative, individuals can gather to themselves the fruits of free trade with other individuals who are interested in the products or services the entrepreneur creates. People understand this intuitively, and one would be hard pressed to find a person in whom this does not spark interest. Therefore, since the vast majority of people would act to improve their lives, I submit that the difference between entrepreneurs and everyone else is a false distinction. Everyone has entrepreneurial spirit in them, with the key difference amongst people instead being tolerance for risk.

With this in mind, I think a reassessment of the experiential definition of entrepreneurship is in order. Under the prior understanding, many people would find

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