The term “entrepreneurship” has traditionally been used to describe the activity of an economic agent whose function it is to introduce innovative changes into the means and relations of production inherent in an economy. In this guise, the entrepreneur streamlines already existent production processes either through the innovative use of current technology, or streamlines production through the employment of new technologies. In addition to this, the entrepreneur may also create new services or products in response to market demand. If the products and services offered in an economy are seen to evolve, the entrepreneur is the agent that aids the evolution, perceiving and then addressing market inefficiencies and gaps by channelling investment capital away from underperforming entities into more productive organisations. In current popular usage, however, “entrepreneurship” has come to describe a particular mind-set that can be seen to denote any pioneering and innovative endeavour that addresses the inadequacies of current norms and practices. It is thus that the terms Social Entrepreneurship, Political Entrepreneurship and Knowledge Entrepreneurship appear regularly in the press and media.
Sticking to the more traditional denotation of “entrepreneur”, this article will briefly mention three theoretical types of entrepreneur (theoretical because any real-life entrepreneur might be a complex mix of these three types).
Social Entrepreneur
- The social entrepreneur is primarily motivated by a deep desire to improve upon, or fundamentally change, prevailing and detrimental socio-economic, educational, environmental or health conditions. A social entrepreneur has a fierce ambition to alter the present reality of conditions s/he deems unacceptable or inhumane, and stubbornly refuses to accept the norm, or arguments that simply rationalise, if not justify, prevailing circumstances. The key trait of the social entrepreneur is, however, the fact that they are driven to engage in certain activities not by the promise of possible profit, but by an overwhelming sense of social conscience and social responsibility. The goal of this type of entrepreneur is to develop effective models that not only respond to a specific need, but can be propagated and implemented in a variety of settings.
Serial Entrepreneur
- The serial entrepreneur consistently conceptualises and executes business models that s/he intends, ultimately, to sell to shareholders, investors, or other businesses. Serial entrepreneurs can be seen to take on relatively high amounts of risk, display an ability to effectively handle the accompanying stress as they are usually very adaptable to changing conditions, and more often than not display a pattern of success (despite some failures) in the long run. Serial entrepreneurs display a definite propensity to recover both, economically as well as in confidence, from business and personal failures.
Lifestyle Entrepreneur
- The central characteristic of the lifestyle entrepreneur is the attempt to create profit from personal passion. This is to say that the “lifestyler” tries to discover innovative ways in which a personal passion can translate into enough profit from which a living can be earned. More so than the above two entrepreneurial types, the lifestyle entrepreneur aims to be self-employed. S/he is not in the trade of building business models, and is instead a practitioner of a specific trade or profession that attempts to break away from the mainstream in order to build a sustainable business from which a living allowance can be drawn over a long-period of time. It is thus that the lifestyle entrepreneur often invests heavily in his or her own business, rather than cede substantial control to an individual or group of investors. In this type of business model, the entrepreneur assumes personal risk, but is rewarded (if the business survives) with independence and autonomy from authority structures.