I can say confidently that they are truly entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs with a totally different mindset. But yes, entrepreneurs. We share a lot of qualities, but what they do vs. Your email address will not be published.
Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Post comment. Skip to content. Facebook Twitter. Social Entrepreneurs Vs. Do social entrepreneurs even care about making revenue and turning a profit? Is their main goal to do social good first and make money second, or is their main goal to make money by using a social cause?
Do they truly care about their causes, or are they using the social aspect of their business models to relate to consumers, thus bringing in more revenue? Those investors, in turn, must be willing to assume greater risk as they assess the credibility of would-be entrepreneurs and the potential impact of formative ventures. Even with these considerations, we believe that appropriating entrepreneurship for the term social entrepreneurship requires wrestling with what we actually mean by entrepreneurship.
Is it simply alertness to opportunity? Although these and other behavioral characteristics are part of the story and certainly provide important clues for prospective investors, they are not the whole story. Such descriptors are also used to describe inventors, artists, corporate executives, and other societal actors. Writing a century later, Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter built upon this basic concept of value creation, contributing what is arguably the most influential idea about entrepreneurship.
Schumpeter identified in the entrepreneur the force required to drive economic progress, absent which economies would become static, structurally immobilized, and subject to decay.
Schumpeter sees the entrepreneur as an agent of change within the larger economy. Peter Drucker, on the other hand, does not see entrepreneurs as necessarily agents of change themselves, but rather as canny and committed exploiters of change.
Regardless of whether they cast the entrepreneur as a breakthrough innovator or an early exploiter, theorists universally associate entrepreneurship with opportunity. Entrepreneurs are believed to have an exceptional ability to see and seize upon new opportunities, the commitment and drive required to pursue them, and an unflinching willingness to bear the inherent risks. Building from this theoretical base, we believe that entrepreneurship describes the combination of a context in which an opportunity is situated, a set of personal characteristics required to identify and pursue this opportunity, and the creation of a particular outcome.
The starting point for entrepreneurship is what we call an entrepreneurial context. For Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, the entrepreneurial context was a computing system in which users were dependent on mainframe computers controlled by a central IT staff who guarded the mainframe like a shrine. Users got their computing tasks done, but only after waiting in line and using the software designed by the IT staff.
If users wanted a software program to do something out of the ordinary, they were told to wait six months for the programming to be done. But since the centralized computing model was the only one available, users put up with it and built the delays and inefficiencies into their workflow, resulting in an equilibrium, albeit an unsatisfactory one.
It is similar to a thermostat on an air conditioner: When the temperature rises, the air conditioner comes on and lowers the temperature, and the thermostat eventually turns the air conditioner off. The centralized computing system that users had to endure was a particular kind of equilibrium: an unsatisfactory one.
It is as if the thermostat were set five degrees too low so that everyone in the room was cold. Pierre Omidyar and Jeff Skoll identified an unsatisfactory equilibrium in the inability of geographically based markets to optimize the interests of both buyers and sellers.
As a result, the market was not optimal for buyers or sellers. People selling used household goods, for example, held garage sales that attracted physically proximate buyers, but probably not the optimal number or types of buyers. People trying to buy obscure goods had no recourse but to search through Yellow Page directories, phoning and phoning to try to track down what they really wanted, often settling for something less than perfect.
Parents wishing to keep their babies close while carrying on basic tasks had two options: They could learn to juggle offspring in one arm while managing chores with the other, or they could plop the child in a stroller, buggy, or other container and keep the child nearby.
Either option was less than ideal. In the case of Fred Smith, the suboptimal equilibrium he saw was the long-distance courier service. Before FedEx came along, sending a package across country was anything but simple.
This system was logistically complex, it involved a number of handoffs, and the scheduling was dictated by the needs of the common carriers. Often something would go wrong, but no one would take responsibility for solving the problem.
Users learned to live with a slow, unreliable, and unsatisfactory service — an unpleasant but stable situation because no user could change it. The entrepreneur is attracted to this suboptimal equilibrium, seeing embedded in it an opportunity to provide a new solution, product, service, or process.
The reason that the entrepreneur sees this condition as an opportunity to create something new, while so many others see it as an inconvenience to be tolerated, stems from the unique set of personal characteristics he or she brings to the situation — inspiration, creativity, direct action, courage, and fortitude. These characteristics are fundamental to the process of innovation. The entrepreneur is inspired to alter the unpleasant equilibrium.
Entrepreneurs might be motivated to do this because they are frustrated users or because they empathize with frustrated users. Sometimes entrepreneurs are so gripped by the opportunity to change things that they possess a burning desire to demolish the status quo. The entrepreneur thinks creatively and develops a new solution that dramatically breaks with the existing one. Each found a completely new and utterly creative solution to the problem at hand.
Once inspired by the opportunity and in possession of a creative solution, the entrepreneur takes direct action. Rather than waiting for someone else to intervene or trying to convince somebody else to solve the problem, the entrepreneur takes direct action by creating a new product or service and the venture to advance it.
Of course, entrepreneurs do have to influence others: first investors, even if just friends and family; then teammates and employees, to come work with them; and finally customers, to buy into their ideas and their innovations. Entrepreneurs demonstrate courage throughout the process of innovation, bearing the burden of risk and staring failure squarely if not repeatedly in the face. This often requires entrepreneurs to take big risks and do things that others think are unwise, or even undoable.
Finally, entrepreneurs possess the fortitude to drive their creative solutions through to fruition and market adoption. What industry are you in, and how do you define your style of entrepreneurship? Let us know in the comments section below or feel free to contact us. Enjoy the article! All entrepreneurs found a company, or that is to say, a business. When you use business to solve a problem, make life more convenient, or do something better than it had been done before, you are an entrepreneur.
This entrepreneur wants to use their business to make money. They will develop, bootstrap and launch a company specifically for the sake of turning a profit.
While they are looking to affect change through their company, there is no specified social mission attached to their business. Although a social entrepreneur follows the same path to success as a business entrepreneur, their goals are radically different. The world is faced with a multitude of pressing issues such as hunger, adverse climate conditions, poor education systems and crime, just to name a few.
With all these issues, there is nothing as rewarding as an act that will positively impact society. This could be done through volunteer work, charities, and donations not to mention good leadership. Other activities and businesses can be run solely to benefit society.
In a bid to this, social businesses and social entrepreneurship have been formed. Although they are quite similar, they differ in various ways. Initiated by Muhammad Yunus, this is a business aimed at solving a specific social problem and not for profits. Social businesses are common in the education, housing, nutrition, healthcare and financial sectors, with the success being based on the amount of impact on society as opposed to the number of profits made.
Seeing that these businesses operate to positively impact society, the question of funding always arises. Social businesses are prohibited from receiving funds from people, seek financial support from the government or receive grants. These are entrepreneurial activities aimed at achieving a positive social change either by employing processes, principles and operations towards solving cultural, environmental or social issues.
0コメント