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It sounds a bit strange to be talking about 10 definitions of entrepreneurship. At its core, there is only one singular definition of entrepreneurship. It is about taking risks, taking an idea from its seed, building it, nurturing it, and making it grow into a fully established business. This whole act and the journey of an idea from start to finish and its expansion is where entrepreneurship lies. The central tenets are risk taking, being innovative, challenging the status quo, and then finding the perceiver ends to make this business idea, work.

In this article, however, we explore the definitions of entrepreneurship in specific traits, traits such as vision, ability to take risks, providing leadership, innovation, adapting to the market conditions, value creation, etc. all of these act and provide a theme of their own. They also provide a flavour of one of the definitions of entrepreneurship. So you may use it either to define characteristics of an entrepreneur, or to highlight what entrepreneurship really is and the breadth and width of the dimensions it might take.

What is entrepreneurship?

The definitions of entrepreneurship is rooted in the French word – entreprende which means taking risks. Entrepreneurship is the process of identifying, creating, and pursuing opportunities to develop new products, services, or businesses. It involves taking calculated risks, innovating, and being proactive in bringing ideas to fruition, with the goal of achieving financial success and making a positive impact on society. Entrepreneurs are individuals who exhibit creativity, determination, and a vision to disrupt markets, drive economic growth, and foster innovation.

10 Definitions of Entrepreneurship

These definitions of entrepreneurship offer a marriage between the core traits required for an entrepreneur. As we explore these definitions, we’ll explore why they are so important to form the basis of definition of entrepreneurship. Risk and business development forms the foundation of these characteristic traits. But these definitions will find their way through various stages of the business in entrepreneurship.

1. Vision and Innovation in Entrepreneurship

The vision is one of the main aspects of entrepreneurship. In fact, it’s the first one in the list of the 10 definitions of entrepreneurship. If an entrepreneur does not have a vision, then the business doesn’t exist. In fact, the seed of thought for any entrepreneurship is a problem, but the vision talks about how to solve the problem. The Vision also encourages you to think about why you need to solve the problem and engage various people required to be able to address this problem space without the vision.

 The idea is dead right from the start, no matter how passionate you are about the problem, unless you have a vision of how you’re going to solve it, how you’re going to garner all the resources required for it, how you’re going to convince the investors who will be dressed in the business, it all comes from the single point of vision. Vision for entrepreneur must be bold; it must be beyond their existing capabilities. It must look forward into the market, and sometimes even create a narrative, which can inspire everyone involved in the journey

2. Risk Taking and Endurance

This definition of entrepreneurship is to the very core of the word from which it’s derived – Entreprenede. Entrepreneurship is derived from the French word entrepreneur Day, which means taking risks, unless you are taking risks, there is no definition of an entrepreneur. An entrepreneur takes various types of risks. Some of these risks are personal, some financial, reputational and opportunity, etc. Each one of these risks has a cost associated to it. Some of these costs are easily manageable.

One of the most common questions people ask me about risks in entrepreneurship is the amount of money invested. I would rather say the loss of money is a lower risk compared to your own opportunity costs, the amount of emotional drain a business takes on you, and also all the personal sacrifices you have to make, a business will demand your heart and soul. It will expect you to work more than the amount of time you can afford for something that demands so much out of you. The risks that you take are often far more than what appears to be paper. So, I would certainly encourage you to think about all the various types of risks, especially the personal ones before you delve in to the area of entrepreneurship. (Types of risks in entrepreneurship)

3. Problem Solving

I know that we constantly talk about the problem space, trying to understand what the customer’s problems are, whether these problems are consistent across many people. The main reason why we think about these problems is to identify whether a solution this problem can address the needs of more than one customer. The one of the main definitions of scalable startup entrepreneurship is its ability to expand and grow, unless your business idea or the solution can solve problems. For many people, you won’t be able to expand it so easily.

Hence, when we reflect on the problem solving ability of this entrepreneur, it’s all about identifying different ways, a solution can be produced to solve the problem. The problem is still one of the most important things, but entrepreneurship will not thrive if the founder is just worried about the problem. It demands the founder to be passionate about the problem, but always come up with the problem solving approach.

This doesn’t also mean that the entrepreneur is the person who solves all the problems. An entrepreneur has to be supported by a team with them and the subsequent funds required to develop an idea and mature a solution and address the market, but the attitude to solve a problem forms one of the core tenets of 10 definitions of entrepreneurship.

4. Leadership

Entrepreneur is a leader and not a follower. Leadership from an entrepreneur happens in all directions. It starts right from the idea, gathering support for this idea, and coming up with initial hypothesis for a solution of this idea. As an entrepreneur, you’ll also have to build your business case, develop the idea further, do market analysis and identify if there is something within your idea that can solve a problem materially.

An entrepreneur usually has a bias, because we are all very protective about our ideas. This world will demand you to be objective about it and brutally ask yourself whether this problem can be solved, and all of these expect you to be a very strong leader, a leader who can inspire investors, teams, initial customers, everyone with their idea and division. It takes these leaders to think beyond what’s available, to explore the possibility, and above all, not to take no for an answer.

Some of these skills can easily be found in a manager, but the leadership abilities ask you to go beyond and encourage you to take higher levels of risks. These risks define whether your entrepreneurship will be a success, and hence, the ability to be a leader forms from the core definitions of entrepreneurship.

5. Opportunity Seeking and Developing

For an entrepreneur, opportunities don’t come by naturally. Sometimes you’ll have to be inventive to go out and create these opportunities for yourself.  You’ll always constantly have to keep looking out about what can connect to your idea and how you can build a network of supporters to enable the growth of your idea.

There are two aspects to this definition of entrepreneurship. One is purely about all the opportunities that are available out there forms an opportunity seeking behaviour. The other is about opportunity development behaviour.

This is to think beyond what’s visible and work with the possibility that you will connect the dots sometime in the future, you’ll have to groom these opportunities right from scratch, even sometimes there are very small, intangible connections to the idea. It is a rather challenging ask, but unless you are creative about both seeking and developing these opportunities. The ability to thrive in this entrepreneur world will be limited.

6. Innovation

Innovation is at the heart of the 10 definitions of entrepreneurship. Most entrepreneurs are innovative. I think we have a wrong perception of innovation. The first thing that comes to mind when we think about innovation is, is technology? How we use it, such as artificial intelligence, anything that is to do with the core science subjects, things worked out in the lab, etc.

 However, innovation can be in smaller, tangible and more visible aspects. These innovations could be a service model or a business model in which revenue is shared. Take, for example, Uber it’s, it’s, it was not built by technology. Technology enabled it, but the main model was to be able to provide service at fingertips for a customer.

Technology here was an enabler, but that in itself was not an innovation. One of the common problems we face is that we tend to think about the tools to solve the problem as the most innovative thing. We can certainly find some level of innovation there, but there is a huge amount of innovation, how we provide a service, how we talk to the customer, make them feel valued, and provide value at the end. And that’s where true entrepreneurship strikes. It is to provide immense value for customers, investment, whether it is time, money or just sharing their opinion with you.

7. Wearing Multiple Hats

An entrepreneur wears multiple hats. You are the website developer, idea creator, market analyst, customer representative, sales agent, everything to do right when you start the business, there is no one to support it. You don’t have the benefit of being in a team or collaboration to to be able to work your idea from start to finish.

These develop only with time when you have raised funds or gathered some additional supporters, such as co founders, initial founding team, etc. Until then, you’ll have to maximise what you’ve got at the starting stages. Money is always a limitation. Hence you end up wearing multiple hats, such as doing various different roles that is required for the business.

This will also require you to be less of an expert and more of a generalist, at least at the starting stages, but as you grow further, you start honing in on those specialized areas where only you can provide immense value to the customer or even the market. But the truth is that you can’t escape the need to do multiple things as an entrepreneur, even if there are areas of your weakness you just have to take the initiative to go ahead and do it. And that’s why this ability of an entrepreneur forms one of the tenets of the 10 definitions of entrepreneurship.

8. Customer Focus

One of the core requirements of being an entrepreneur is that you intimately listen to what the customer is telling you. Sometimes these customers don’t directly come and talk to you about a problem, but they’ll always have ways to hint at the problem. It’s very important to follow a proper customer discovery process. Stay with the problem space, identify the different types of problems they’re facing. Also try to quantify the type of problems they’re facing, so that you know that there is potentially a revenue opportunity for you when you solve this problem, no matter what it is said, one of the most common reasons why entrepreneurships fail is because of the lack of product market fit. (35% startups fail due to missing product market fit)

Most entrepreneurs try and develop a product it doesn’t meet the needs of a customer. The business exists only if a customer exists. No matter how good the product is, it doesn’t matter because unless there’s a customer using it, the idea fails. And once that happens, the entrepreneurship faces an eventual death. So unless you are actively focusing on customers, their development and their pain points, an entrepreneurship has a higher chance of failure.

9. Market Opportunity Seizing

Entrepreneurship thrives on seizing market opportunities. Entrepreneurs leverage market gaps, unmet needs, or emerging trends to launch ventures with the potential for significant impact and financial gains.

10. Global Impact

Entrepreneurship transcends borders, enabling entrepreneurs to create ventures with global significance. By embracing cultural diversity and technological advancements, entrepreneurs envision solutions with far-reaching impacts, contributing to the betterment of society worldwide.