Innovation and Enterpreneursip

Chapter One

Systematic Entrepreneurship

"The entrepreneur," said the French economist J. B. Say around 1800, "shifts economic resources out of an area of lower and into an area of higher productivity and greater yield." But Say's definition does not tell us who this "entrepreneur" is. And since Say coined the term almost two hundred years ago, there has been total confusion over the definitions of "entrepreneur" and "entrepreneurship."

In the United States, for instance, the entrepreneur is often defined as one who starts his own, new and small business. Indeed, the courses in "Entrepreneurship" that have become popular of late in American business schools are the linear descendants of the course in starting one's own small business that was offered thirty years ago, and in many cases, not very different.

But not every new small business is entrepreneurial or represents entrepreneurship.

The husband and wife who open another delicatessen store or another Mexican restaurant in the American suburb surely take a risk. But are they entrep ... read full excerpt from: Innovation and Entrepreneurship ebook