Entrepreneurs & Entrepreneurship ESSAM 2011 Professor Stephen Lawrence Leeds School of Business University of Colorado at Boulder

Agenda What is Entrepreneurship? Who are Entrepreneurs? What myths surround entrepreneurship? What are characteristics of entrepreneurs? How I be an entrepreneur?

What is entrepreneurship?

What is Entrepreneurship? “Entrepreneurship is creating and building something of value from practically nothing. That is, entrepreneurship is the process of creating or seizing an opportunity and pursuing it, regardless of resources presently controlled.” Jeffrey Timmons

What is Entrepreneurship? Creative Destruction (& Innovation) –Capitalism, then, is by nature a form or method of economic change and not only never is but never can be stationary. –The fundamental impulse that sets and keeps the capitalist engine in motion comes from the new consumers, goods, the new methods of production or transportation, the new markets, the new forms of industrial organization that capitalist enterprise creates. Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, Joseph Schumpeter

Replicative vs. Innovative EShip Replicative entrepreneurship? –Duplicates other ideas –Incremental, seldom innovative Innovative entrepreneurship? –Innovative solutions to important problems –Problems sometimes unrecognized The defining characterize of entrepreneurship is not the size of the company buy the act of innovation. (Economist magazine)

Who are entrepreneurs?

Who are Entrepreneurs? Someone who upsets and disorganizes. Entrepreneurs innovate. Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship. (Peter Drucker) An entrepreneur is the bold and imaginative deviator from established business practices and patterns. (William Baumol) Entrepreneurship is the pursuit of opportunity beyond the resources you currently control. (Howard Stevenson)

Who are Entrepreneurs? “Some are eccentrics; some painfully correct nonconformists “Some are fat; some are lean “Some are warriors; some relaxed “Some drink quite heavily; others abstain “Some have great charm or warmth; some have no more personality than a frozen mackerel” Peter Drucker

Who are Entrepreneurs? Maersk Siemens A.G. Virgin etc. Skype Google Arnold Peter Møller – Maersk Shipping Ernst Werner von Siemens Sir Richard Branson Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis Sergy Brin & Larry Page

Characteristics of Entrepreneurs

What are Some Eship Myths? 1.Entrepreneurs are orphans & outcasts 2.Entrepreneurs are young 3.Entrepreneurship is driven by venture capital 4.Successful startups must produce world-changing new products 5.Entrepreneurship cannot flourish in big companies

Characteristics of Entrepreneurs? Unusually confident Risk tolerant Strongly attached to their companies Often dyslexic

Why be an Entrepreneur? Independence Creativity Flexibility Leave a legacy Job creation Wealth

How to be an entrepreneur?

Just Do It! “A large proportion of our positive activities depend on spontaneous optimism rather than on mathematical [logic]...our decisions to do something positive, the full consequences of which will be drawn out over many days to come, can only be taken as a result of animal spirits – of a spontaneous urge to action rather than inaction... if the animal spirits are dimmed and the spontaneous optimism falters, leaving us to depend on nothing but [logic], enterprise will fade and die.” John Maynard Keynes

Just Do It! “Traits of entrepreneurs are closest to juvenile delinquents.” – anonymous “Progress depends upon unreasonable men.” –GB Shaw “If I’m in control, I’m probably going to slow.” –Mario Andretti “If you ain’t makin’ waves, you ain’t kickin’ hard enough.” – anonymous

Your Ideas for a “Born Global” Business

Entrepreneurs & Entrepreneurship ESSAM 2011 Professor Stephen Lawrence Leeds School of Business University of Colorado at Boulder