Session 1: Entrepreneurship History and Definition

Entrepreneurship

History and Definition

Navigation Instructions

Index

3. Immigration

1. Welcome

2. What is an Entrepreneur?

5. Definitions: Entrepreneurs vs. Entrepreneurship

6. Modern History of Entrepreneurship

4. Risk Taking

9. Case Study: JHU - School of Education

8. Intrapreneurship

7. Entrepreneurial Teams

Welcome

What is an Entrepreneur?

• British and Scottish Merchants and Manufactures – Pioneered Diversification
• American Manufacturers and Shippers – With connections to British bankers built innovative enterprises
• American Explorers – Chartered New World Settlements, Build New England Cotton Mills
• Creators of the American Railroad – Risk Taking Entrepreneurs

Middle Ages and Age of Exploration

Post Civil War

• Medieval Catholic Church and European royalty estates: Seen as innovative and risk-taking enterprises by historians.
• Marco Polo and Christopher Columbus: Considered entrepreneurs due to personal risk and initiative taken to create new enterprises.
• Women: Typically prevented from controlling properties, although sometimes became family business entrepreneurs through inheritance.

17th and 18th Century

• African-American entrepreneurs:
• Emerged in the South due to lack of services from White-owned businesses/professionals.
• Helped grow small businesses and enterprises grow within their communities.

Immigration

Immigration impacts a nation’s entrepreneurship. Because they are frequently unable to get jobs in the new homelands, immigrants are often forced into entrepreneurial roles. Data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, or GEM, supports the concept that entrepreneurship levels in some nations are impacted by the size of the immigrant population. On the other hand, entrepreneurship norms in particular cultures may impact the growth of immigrants in that nation. So, for example, countries surveyed that have a skilled labor force and lower corruption rates plus higher levels of female literacy, urbanism, and diversity tend to support immigrant growth. That, of course, also supports entrepreneurship.

What do all of the historic references to entrepreneurship have in common?

They define entrepreneurship as:

Risk-Taking

Creative

Innovative

Definitions of Entrepreneurs and Entrepreneurship Differ:

Subdiscipline of Management

There is still much discussion about the definition and components of this interdisciplinary subject. For example, in the business literature, entrepreneurship is often considered a subdiscipline of management. In the business literature, and sometimes economic literature, the salient differences between management and entrepreneurship are defined in this manner:

• Entrepreneurial behavior in business is knowing what is going on in the environment and what innovations may be needed; whereas managerial behavior is knowing why and how to operate the system within the environment.

Disruptive Force

Another approach of the business literature is to regard entrepreneurship as a disruptive force that often occurs at times of uncertainty and causes organizational change. It is innovative and flexible, and it often includes high-growth activities. Entrepreneurs accumulate new and/or scarce resources for the good of the enterprise.

Modern History of Entrepreneurship

1980s

Having roots in psychology, sociology, and economics, business research into entrepreneurial management began in the 1980s. In psychology, it may be a subdiscipline of leadership, and in sociology, a subdiscipline of organizational theory.

1990s

In the 1990s, fewer than 20 schools studied the subject of Entrepreneurship.

2020s

There are now over 400 Entrepreneurship programs in the United States.

Entrepreneurial Teams

Burley & Stockley (2000) stress the need for an entrepreneurial team both within and outside of an organization. Teams may be formal or informal. However, the importance of a team is their ability to see the entire organizational challenge while also bringing new ideas and resources to the venture.

Since entrepreneurship is the ability to recognize what is needed in new situations, team members with diverse backgrounds are an advantage, as they may bring needed experiences from other organizational settings to the new challenge.

Burley & Stockley also note that while homogeneous teams may work better together, heterogeneous teams may be more creative and innovative because of those varied experiences.

Crossing into organizational theory, it is also noted that the nature of the organization and its economic sector, in turn, may have a great impact on the success of entrepreneurial activities.

Chang, Stone and Jackson believe that the quality of entrepreneurial enterprises should be evaluated not just on their financial success, but also on their expansion, novelty, and dynamism.

Intrapreneurship

Intrapreneurship is a different type of entrepreneurship that defines the activity of working inside an organization or institution. Educational leaders frequently located within such organizations often engage intrapreneurship to innovate. These leaders must frequently take on the traditional culture and rules of their organizations. Further, they must also frequently secure resources and support for untapped sources and areas of the organization as well as from external partners. Because they are innovating within a stable culture, intrapreneurs often find themselves risking their own careers and threatening stakeholders within their own organizations. Again, intrapreneurs are embedded within organizations and must overcome the institution's culture and constraints. In order to instigate and sustain innovation, they must also work primarily with internal resources and actors. Within education, intrapreneurs are often known as institutional entrepreneurs. Institutional entrepreneurs are also viewed as innovators who change the patterns and norms of the organization's operations without necessarily engaging in a new enterprise.

Case Study: Johns Hopkins School of Education

Successful institutional entrepreneurship depends on the actors, and perhaps even more so than with entrepreneurial business activity, the organization and its professional environment. Organizations may be open to entrepreneurship, due to an action-forcing event and change in the environment or if the organization is relatively less embedded in its sector’s environment. So, for example, the Johns Hopkins School of Education was able to engage in entrepreneurial activity in 2010 because the teacher preparation environment changed dramatically after the Great Recession of 2008 and 2009. Embedded entrepreeurial actors with high-level formal positions, other organizational legitimacy, or social capital, are more likely able to conduct entrepreneurial activity than othersilizing and motivating others around them.