It was an Irish man, Richard Cantillon, who was generally recognised as having introduced the word ‘entrepreneur’ to the economic lexicon. Originally from Kerry, Cantillon lived much of his working life in France apparently earning money from banking and stock market trading. He also recorded his observation of the economic system of his day in a book which was not published until 1755, sometime after his death, explains Prof Simon Bridge.
In this he used the French word ‘entrepreneur’ to describe people who were an important component in the economic system but who had known costs, such as the rent for the land they used or the wages of the people they employed, but whose income was uncertain because it depended on factors beyond their control – such as market conditions.
It took a long time for the word entrepreneur to be picked up in English and widely used – and it would seem that it wasn’t until well into the 20th century that the suffix ‘-ship’ began to be attached to it. Today we have all heard the word ‘entrepreneurship’ – but what does it mean? If leadership is as the ability to lead and the act of leading and if friendship is the act of being friendly, is entrepreneurship essentially about being an entrepreneur?
But what is an entrepreneur?
Is it, for example, someone who is enterprising in any situation, or just someone who starts a business – and can that be any business or must it be a high growth potential business and with a new product or using new methods?
Over 50 years ago one commentator noted that ‘for ten years we tried to define the entrepreneur [but] we never succeeded’ and nearly 40 years ago Gartner was able to assemble a summary of 29 views on entrepreneurs, 21 of which included some sort of a definition.
Therefore people tried to find a description of entrepreneurship which would explain why it might sometimes be identified as these apparently different things.
Gartner, in another paper, likened this to the tale of the blind men who were asked to identify an object by touch. One suggested it was a tree, one a fan and another a hose – because the object was an elephant but they had felt different bits of it – a leg, an ear and the truck – which, although they seemed to be different, were nevertheless all part of the same animal.
Therefore, Gartner suggested, people were looking for the ‘elephant’ of which the different observed aspects of entrepreneurship would all be parts – but, he concluded, that elephant does not exist. In other words his view was that the various definitions of ‘entrepreneur’ are not all describing the same thing.
So, if people described as entrepreneurs can be doing different things, what is entrepreneurship? Because we think the economy needs more entrepreneurs who start and run businesses, do we like to think there must be a condition which creates them called ‘entrepreneurship?
Have we, therefore, viewed ‘entrepreneurship’ a bit like a medicine which we can prescribe to cure an economic illness? However, in medicine, usually a cure is invented and proved before it is given a name. But here are we trying that in reverse and, because we have a name for it, do we suppose that the cure exists?
Actually in practice our ‘entrepreneurship’ policies have generally failed to produce more business entrepreneurs so it would seem that we haven’t correctly identified the conditions in which entrepreneurs will emerge and flourish – and so we haven’t found a working formula for stimulating more business starts.
Nevertheless, because the word ‘entrepreneurship’ is often used, do others think that that such a condition must exist – and that we do understand it and how it works?
But, with different views on who is an entrepreneur, how can we expect there to be a common view on ‘entrepreneurship’? So why do we still use the word? Some people when they use it also supply a definition of what they mean by it – but that is cumbersome and often, especially when such musings are repeated to others, that definition gets lost or ignored.
Therefore, recognising entrepreneurship’s limitations, if we really want to communicate clearly should we stop using the word and replace it with an alternative which more clearly conveys our meaning?
