What is entrepreneurship? Watch and smile.

what is entrepreneurship

When you think of entrepreneurship, you quickly think of having and running your own company. In most cases, this is also the matter, but it does not have to be that way.

You also come across entrepreneurship within an organization, also called internal entrepreneurship or intrapreneurship. You are ‘playing’ entrepreneur within an organization.

Many people see entrepreneurship as the same as making money. After all, that’s the goal of doing business, right?

Table of contents

What is entrepreneurship? Watch the 2 minutes animated video and smile.

Did you get a smile on your face?

Entrepreneurship runs on money, but isn’t about money.

To define entrepreneurship, three characteristics of entrepreneurship come into play. It means seeing opportunities, seizing opportunities, and creating value for yourself and others.

With value, you can think of money. Of course, you earn an income for yourself. Moreover, if you employ people, you also have to provide for their income. However, it entails risks, but that’s why you became an entrepreneur. That is part of entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneurship runs on money, but that is not what it is about. Because, with the right intentions, you also offer value to your customers. You sell something that your customers need. You provide something that solves their problem or gives them pleasure. This is called added value.

So, value is much more than just money. For example, think of the freedom to do what you want when you are your own boss. Nobody decides what you must do; you determine that yourself. In addition, many people start their own business because they want to organize their own time.

By delivering value to others, you can also think of the people who live and work near your company. Because you are nearby, they can buy your products and services and no longer have to go to the city by car, for example. The neighborhood is flourishing again, thanks to the settlement of your company.

Being entrepreneurial as a condition for entrepreneurship.

Seeing and exploiting opportunities over and over again says something about how enterprising someone is. For example, it can be someone with their own company, but also someone who works for a public organization. So, this implicates that someone who does not have a company or job can also be very enterprising. So being entrepreneurial is not the same as running your own business.

Even if you are self-employed or own a business, that in itself doesn’t mean you are enterprising too. For example, there are approximately 30,2 million business owners in the USA (US Census Bureau, 2017). However, not all of them are automatically equally entrepreneurial. A large proportion (about 35%) is struggling to survive it to the next year. You probably don’t see the smile of entrepreneurship on their face.

The opposite is also true. Someone who is very entrepreneurial doesn’t always have a business or ever becomes an entrepreneur. So, it doesn’t matter whether you are a business owner, but how entrepreneurial you are. If you are not entrepreneurial – that is to say, you do not see opportunities and don’t take action to seize them; entrepreneurship becomes quite tricky.

See and seize opportunities and create value for yourself and others.

The question: “what is entrepreneurship?” is, therefore, about the combination of seeing opportunities, exploiting opportunities, and delivering added value. The first two parts are about the entrepreneurial attitude: seeing and taking advantage of opportunities. This attitude is also sometimes referred to as the entrepreneurial mindset or enterprising behavior.

You can apply that entrepreneurial attitude anytime, anywhere: at work (job or own company), at school, and in your free time.

Offering added value means that you are of value to others when you take advantage of the opportunities you see. In the end, that also provides you with benefits, such as money, income, satisfaction, or a contribution to society.

So entrepreneurship is not about money; it is a means to a bigger end. So it’s about the value you add to yourself and others. How happy do you make yourself and others happy with your entrepreneurship? Else, look for jobs in US.

Read more on successful entrepreneurship.