An A To Z Of Entrepreneurship | StartUs Magazine (2024)

Many words are associated with entrepreneurship. It is a veritable alphabet soup, “a metaphor for an abundance of abbreviations or acronyms, named for a common dish made from alphabet pasta” (Wikipedia).

If entrepreneurship is a dish, do you know some of its ‘A-B-C’s? If you are thinking of becoming an entrepreneur or working with the entrepreneurship concept, here are just some of the words you may need to familiarise yourself with. Check out this A to Z!

A is for ASSETS

Entrepreneurship is often described as the pursuit of opportunities to combine or deploy resources regardless of current ownership or control of those resources. The pure entrepreneur does not initially own any resources (19) or assets. Such assets can be financial, physical, human resources, organizational processes, technology or intangibles such as brands. Sustainable entrepreneurial advantage depends on the possession of unique, difficult to imitate assets (14).

Entrepreneurial strategy (6) thus centres on the acquisition, development and leverage of competitive advantage granting resources, assets or capabilities (29).

B is for BEHAVIOR

Entrepreneurship is a distinct feature of an individual or institution, but it is not a trait but an aspect of behaviour (7). Behaviour is the central element in the entrepreneurial process, and a person’s actions are what make them entrepreneurial (8).

Entrepreneurial behaviour is the result of the successful development of an organisation by a growth oriented entrepreneur (36).

C is for CREATIVITY

Creativity involves coming up with ideas. Entrepreneurship involves capturing ideas, converting them into products and services, and then building a venture to take the product to market (18).

“Whenever some firms in an industry do something else, something that is outside of the range of existing practice, we may speak of creative response. Accordingly, a study of creative response in business becomes co-terminous with a study of entrepreneurship” (32)

D is for DIFFERENT

Entrepreneurs are motivated by doing something different rather than doing better what is already being done (7). It is in most cases only one entrepreneur or a few entrepreneurs who see “the new possibility and are able to cope with the resistances and difficulties which action always meets with outside of the ruts of established practice” (32).

Entrepreneurs are individuals who create something different.

E is for EXECUTION

Profitable survival and growth requires a combination of a creative idea and a superior capacity for execution (4).

“It is not invention that matters, but its adoption and actual working. The inventor produces ideas, the entrepreneur ‘gets things done’ (31).

Entrepreneurs share a commitment to engaging everyone in identifying and pursuing entrepreneurial opportunities, coupled with a disciplined and consistent focus on execution (24). They make execution a natural sequence in the strategy process (2).

F is for FUTURE

Entrepreneurs are concerned not with what is but what can be (38). They envision the future, recognise emerging patterns, identify untapped opportunities and come up with innovations to exploit these opportunities (27).

Those who can expand their imaginations to see a wider range of possible futures are much better positioned to take advantage of the unexpected opportunities that will arise in the future (30). In fact, industry foresight, which is the ability to synthesize the collective impact of a complex set of economic, political, regulatory and social changes, is increasingly at a premium (15)

G is for GROWTH

The entrepreneurial mind-set is a growth oriented perspective (16). Growth is the dominant goal of the entrepreneurial organisation. The entrepreneur establishes and manages a business for the primary purposes of profit and growth. Entrepreneurial activity does not cease once a new firm is fully operative, or an innovation successfully launched.

Entrepreneurship then is the function by which growth is achieved, and not only the act of starting new businesses (34).

H is for HARD

The entrepreneurial journey to success is notoriously hard, and the start-up failure rate is very high. An entrepreneur has the persistence to see things through to the end even when faced with obstacles and difficulties (18). Niccolo Machiavelli in his seminal book ‘The Prince’ defined an entrepreneur as someone who sees no difference between obstacle and opportunity, and can use both to his advantage.

I is for INNOVATION

Joseph Schumpeter considers entrepreneurship as something which essentially disrupts the market through innovation (34). Innovation is the creation, development and implementation of new ideas and behaviours (37). It is through innovation that ideas are brought to life, and opportunities are translated to enduring value.

J is for JOBS

Entrepreneurship is often credited with causing economic growth and creating employment (23). Research shows that most jobs in an economy are created by small businesses.

Indeed, start-ups and small businesses have emerged as the driving force of innovation, jobs, competitiveness and growth (3).

K is for KNOWLEDGE

Learning is an essential part of the entrepreneurial process (5). At the heart of the modern corporation is a realisation that a company’s prime assets are no longer plant, machinery, buildings, finance etc., but the intellectual capabilities of its people, and that the knowledge and ideas flowing from it are a more important source of competitive advantage than a firm’s physical assets (25). The shift in competitiveness is to knowledge (17).

A firm’s rate of growth can be limited or enhanced by the growth of knowledge within it (28). It is through effective entrepreneurship that organisations develop knowledge and use it as a continuous source of innovation to outperform competitors (5)

L is for LEADERSHIP

Entrepreneurship aims at leadership and dominance (7) of a new market or niche. Many companies have survived, prospered and maintained their positions as leaders in their fields by actively stimulating a spirit and culture of enterprise (18).

Entrepreneurship is a leadership phenomenon, which “creates visionary scenarios that are used to assemble and mobilize stakeholders who become committed by the vision towards the discovery and exploitation of strategic value creation” (13).

M is for MARKET

A good entrepreneur delivers answers to Peter Drucker’s longstanding questions:

Who is the customer?
What does the customer value?
Drucker maintained that a business had two main functions – marketing and innovation. Ultimately, entrepreneurs seek to dominate or lead a broad market or niche by supplying products or services that satisfy a market’s unmet needs.

N is for NEW

Entrepreneurs are individuals who create something new. It is the ‘doing of new things’ or the ‘doing of things that are already being done in a new way’ (32) that defines the entrepreneurial process.

O is for OPPORTUNITY

The classic definition of an entrepreneur is someone who develops an idea or perceives an opportunity that others have overlooked or chosen not to pursue, and creates an organisation to pursue it (12). Entrepreneurial performance involves the ability to see new opportunities that cannot be proved at the moment at which action is taken (32).

It is the recognition and exploitation of opportunities that result in obtaining value (1).

P is for PERFORMANCE

Entrepreneurship involves simultaneous opportunity seeking and advantage seeking behaviours which result in superior performance.

Leading edge firms see the effective use of entrepreneurship as a source of competitive advantage and as a path to higher levels of financial and non-financial performance (17)

Q is for QUALITY

Entrepreneurs need to be first with the best service, anticipating, meeting or exceeding customer requirements and expectations (19).

Only by delivering a quality service or product consistently can an entrepreneur build a sustainable business with repeat customers.

R is for RISK

Cantillon, who coined the term ‘entrepreneur’ in the 17th century, said that entrepreneurship entails bearing risk. It is the commitment of present resources to future expectations and that means to uncertainty and risk (7). As organizations grow, there is continually a new form of constructive risk taking happening (26). Thus entrepreneurship is the process by which organizations renew themselves and their markets by pioneering, innovation and risk taking (18).

But an entrepreneur also manages the risks attached to the process. A successful entrepreneur can correctly interpret the risk and determine policies which will minimize that risk. Thus the individual who can correctly measure the risk situation, but is unable to minimize the risk, would not be defined as an entrepreneur (9).

S is for STARTUP

Schumpeter argues that entrepreneurship means innovation by independently owned start-up firms (33). The entrepreneur is often one who starts his own new, small business (7).

Entrepreneurship involves capturing ideas, converting them into products and services and then building a venture to take the product to market (18).

T is for TRAIT

Much of the literature on entrepreneurship has focused on the characteristics that define entrepreneurs and the nature of entrepreneurial talent (11).

Is entrepreneurship a trait or an aspect of behaviour? Are entrepreneurs born or made? The nature vs. nurture argument is a recurring part of entrepreneurship discussions.

U is for UNDERTAKING

The French roots of the word ‘entrepreneur’ come from the term enterprise. The German equivalent term ‘unternehmer’, means to undertake.

An entrepreneur is a person who undertakes the risk to begin and maintain a productive operation, usually in an independent capacity (22).

V is for VISION

Entrepreneurship is the ability to build from a vision, from practically nothing (35). Entrepreneurs are guided by that vision, have a sense of what they are and what they want to become (27).

W is for WEALTH

Successful entrepreneurship is associated with both the creation and loss of wealth, for themselves as well as their stakeholders. Entrepreneurial activity may result in wealth creation either individually or societally (10).

Yet entrepreneurial intention is not always motivated by the desire to be wealthy. Wealth follows the creation of a successful business. It is important to recognize that entry into business does not necessarily guarantee remaining in business (10) and that one could lose wealth in the process as well!

X is for X-FACTOR

There are many schools of thought around entrepreneurship, and widely divergent views regarding who an entrepreneur is, what an entrepreneurial venture looks like, and what activities constitute entrepreneurial behaviour (33).

Is there an entrepreneurial X-factor at play here, and intangible attribute that most entrepreneurs possess?

Y is for YIELD

“The entrepreneur shifts economic resources out of an area of lower, and into an area of higher productivity and greater yield” – Jean Baptiste Say

A rise in both national and firm level productivity can be achieved by enhancing innovation and entrepreneurship (21).

Z is for ZENITH

There is no such thing as reaching the peak or zenith of achievement for the successful entrepreneur. Once one hill is scaled, a bigger one becomes the next target!

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