An entrepreneur is someone with the capacity and willingness to develop, organize and manage a business venture along with any of its risks in order to make a profit, according to Wikipedia.
In as much as this might be detailed, it is also, as a definition, limiting.
The meaning of the word Entrepreneur has taken so many dimensions in the present day and age. The diverse cultures and patterns new businesses take nowadays is not helping matters. Smart and creative professionals have now transformed traditional-dependent professions into standalone businesses. You could be an entrepreneur in the new sense of it without knowing it.
Let us look at the modern-day entrepreneur and places he is present.
1. The Conventional Entrepreneur
This is the entrepreneur we all know. They head startups, agencies, medium-sized companies, and big corporations. They are mostly referred to as Chief Executive Officers. However, the titles are getting more creative nowadays. Chief Managing Officer and Chief Directing Officer are some others. Expect to see a lot more similar to those.
2. The Information Entrepreneur
Everywhere you go on the internet today, there is always one information product being sold or offered for free (if you are ready to part with some of your private info like name, email address or phone number). They range from E-Books to courses, with so many other things in between. In fact, there are quite a couple of people that make a lot of money teaching people how to make a lot of money. Do all these information products make sense? No, but some do. Some call them Infopreneurs, a combination of information and Entrepreneur.
3. The Independent One-Man Business Entrepreneur
Professionals like writers, photographers, designers are all into business. They offer a service to people and charge a fee in return. If that’s not business, I don’t know what is. These are the old dependent professions that got revolutionized. Were it in the old days, the photographer most likely will be working for a big agency. These professionals are entrepreneurs. They run a business, invest money, time and energy, and reap profit in the form of service fees or proceeds from book (product) sales. They call themselves names like WriterPreneur (combination of writer and entrepreneur), DesignPreneur (combination of designer and entrepreneur).
4. Head of Department and Employee Entrepreneur
African billionaire businessman, Strive Masiyiwa, has been pushing a movement recently, and it has gathered some attention. Strive is of the opinion that everybody is an entrepreneur, and should, therefore, think and act like one. He went on to explain that as a Janitor, the ground you clean is your business. How good you do it will determine a lot; such as, if your salary will be raised (very similar to increase in revenue for the conventional entrepreneur) or if you will be promoted to a higher position like some sort of supervisor (similar to a startup scaling up).
He also talked about department heads. As the head of marketing in a company, you have enough power to make some key decisions in that department. With this power, there is little differentiating you from the conventional entrepreneur. How good you perform will affect you, your department and the company as a whole because marketing is a very important aspect of business (if not the most important). This is not only obtainable in the marketing department, but it can also be replicated everywhere. Studies have shown that introducing this culture into workplaces makes employees become more conscious and take responsibility for arising issues, which further leads to better performance and increased output. Many chief executives are coming on board this new concept.
It is now very clear how diverse the word Entrepreneur can be. You might even be a new age entrepreneur without knowing it. What type of entrepreneur are you?
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