"Who is an entrepreneur?" Is it still the wrong question?

Academy of Entrepreneurship Journal, Jan, 2007 by Brian McKenzie, Steve D. Ugbah, Norman Smothers

2. Howard Head represents the archetype of the entrepreneur as innovator. He invents a new product, and successfully brings it to market. Again, this scenario would be acceptable as entrepreneurship in all scenarios.

3. Westwind Hardwoods is representative of a small, family business. While the initial development of this business would qualify as entrepreneurial under the Gartner (1985) framework, the re-organization and ongoing operations would not be considered entrepreneurial. All the other frameworks would consider all aspects of this scenario acceptable as entrepreneurial activity.

4. Harley-Davidson through the second half of the twentieth century is representative of corporate entrepreneurship. The company in all of its forms would be considered a part of the primary economy, and thus the turn-around would not be considered entrepreneurship in the Reynolds et al. (1999) framework. The Gartner (1985) framework would also reject this scenario, since the turn-around does not involve the organization of a new venture. The other two frameworks would consider this scenario acceptable as entrepreneurial activity.

5. Rylstone and District Women's Institute Calendar is representative of social entrepreneurship. Again, the Gartner (1985) framework would also reject this scenario, since the turn-around does not involve the organization of a new venture. The Reynolds et al. (1999) framework would call the fund-raising portion of the venture entrepreneurial, but would discount the awareness-raising outcome as non-entrepreneurial, since it was not commercial in nature. The other two frameworks would consider this scenario acceptable as entrepreneurial activity.

6. RVing Seniors is meant to be representative of entrepreneurship in the process of scientific inquiry. The Gartner (1985) framework would reject this scenario as entrepreneurial since it does not involve the organization of a new venture. The Ucbasaran et al. (2001) framework might accept this as a variant of social entrepreneurship. The Reynolds et al. (1999) framework would reject this scenario since it was not commercial in nature. The proposed framework would accept this scenario because it involves the exploitation of economic opportunity. Economic activity, in this definition traces back to the root of the word economy: the management of household or private affairs.

7. Recording in Extraordinary Places is representative of artistic innovation. Again, the Gartner (1985) framework would reject this scenario since it does not involve the organization of a new venture. The Ucbasaran et al. (2001) framework would also reject this scenario since the business aspect of this artistic discovery is secondary. The Reynolds et al. (1999) framework would accept only the part of this scenario that is commercial in nature. The proposed framework would accept this scenario.

The results of the scenario testing of each domain definition are summarized in Table 2. These results provide evidence that the proposed definition is more encompassing than the Gartner (1988) domain, the Venkataraman (1997) domain or the Entrepreneurship Division (2002) domain. Further testing is recommended to confirm this initial finding, and to determine the boundaries of this definition.