Marc Ventresca's recent presentation at TEDx Oxford asks us to rethink the idea of the entrepreneur. He believes, if I have him right, that we subscribe too heavily to the "heroic" model, the one that says entrepreneurs take risks others refuse, freeing themselves from the bounds of convention.
Ventresca, a professor at the Said Business School, prefers to think of entrepreneurs as system builders, creating enterprise by "marshaling, mobilizing, and connecting different worlds." The iPod, Ventresca says, is not so much an invention as a brilliant combination of ideas and inventions already extant.
I believe this obscures what is most interesting about the entrepreneur. Real acts of innovation are something more than acts of combination. They oblige the entrepreneur to leave the space capsule of prevailing theory and practice — and then return. It isn't easy. Often, it isn't fun. And when the entrepreneur is forced to suffer what Thorstein Veblen called the "penalty of taking the lead," it isn't even profitable.
To read the full, original article click on this link: Who and What Is an Entrepreneur? - Grant McCracken - Harvard Business Review
Author:
GRANT MCCRACKEN
