Entrepreneur
An entrepreneur is a person who has possession of an enterprise, or venture, and assumes significant accountability for the inherent risks and the outcome. It is an ambitious leader who combines land, labor, and capital to often create and market new goods or services. The term is a loanword from French and was first defined by the Irish economist Richard Cantillon. Entrepreneur in English is a term applied to the type of personality who is willing to take upon herself or himself a new venture or enterprise and accepts full responsibility for the outcome. Jean-Baptiste Say, a French economist, believed to have coined the word Entrepreneur first in about at 1800. He said an entrepreneur is "one who undertakes an enterprise, especially a contractor, acting as intermediatory between capital and labour".
Entrepreneurship is often difficult and tricky, resulting in many new ventures failing. The word entrepreneur is often synonymous with founder. Most commonly, the term entrepreneur applies to someone who creates value by offering a product or service, by carving out a niche in the market that may not exist currently. Entrepreneurs tend to identify a market opportunity and exploit it by organizing their resources effectively to accomplish an outcome that changes existing interactions within a given sector.
Observers see them as being willing to accept a high level of personal, professional or financial risk to pursue opportunity.
Business entrepreneurs are viewed as fundamentally important in the capitalistic society. Some distinguish business entrepreneurs as either "political entrepreneurs" or "market entrepreneurs," while social entrepreneurs' principal objectives include the creation of a social and/or environmental benefit.
Entrepreneur as a leader
Scholar Robert. B. Reich considers leadership, management ability, and team-building as essential qualities of an entrepreneur. This concept has its origins in the work of Richard Cantillon in his Essai sur la Nature du Commerce en Général (1755) and Jean-Baptiste Say (1803 or 1834) in his Treatise on Political Economy.
A more generally held theory is that entrepreneurs emerge from the population on demand, from the combination of opportunities and people well-positioned to take advantage of them. An entrepreneur may perceive that they are among the few to recognize or be able to solve a problem. In this view, one studies on one side the distribution of information available to would-be entrepreneurs (see Austrian School economics) and on the other, how environmental factors (access to capital, competition, etc.) change the rate of a society's production of entrepreneurs.
A prominent theorist of the Austrian School in this regard is Joseph Schumpeter, who saw the entrepreneur as innovators and popularized the uses of the phrase creative destruction to describe his view of the role of entrepreneurs in changing business norms.
Business incubators are programs designed to accelerate the successful development of entrepreneurial companies through an array of business support resources and services, developed and orchestrated by incubator management and offered both in the incubator and through its network of contacts. Incubators vary in the way they deliver their services, in their organizational structure, and in the types of clients they serve. Successful completion of a business incubation program increases the likelihood that a start-up company will stay in business for the long term: Historically, 87% of incubator graduates stay in business.
Incubators differ from research and technology parks in their dedication to start-up and early-stage companies. Research and technology parks, on the other hand, tend to be large-scale projects that house everything from corporate, government or university labs to very small companies. Most research and technology parks do not offer business assistance services, which are the hallmark of a business incubation program. However, many research and technology parks house incubation programs.
Incubators also differ from the U.S. Small Business Administration's Small Business Development Centers (and similar business support programs) in that they serve only selected clients. SBDCs are required by law to offer general business assistance to any company that contacts them for help. In addition, SBDCs do not target start-up and early-stage companies; they work with any small business at any stage of development. Many business incubation programs partner with their local SBDC to create a "one-stop shop" for entrepreneurial support.
In 2005 alone, North American incubation programs assisted more than 27,000 companies that provided employment for more than 100,000 workers and generated annual revenues of $17 billion.
Principles of ecopreneurship
Sustainable business leaders and environmental entrepreneurs or ecopreneurs, come from a mindset that embraces and adapts to the dynamic changes both in the natural world and the global marketplace. They recognize that environmental challenges can be addressed through the development of environmental products and services that provide both business opportunity and environmentally sustainable options. EcoPreneurs are able to utilize green issues as a competitive advantage for their enterprise through energy and resource maximization, waste reduction, utilization and respect of ecosystem services, and an understanding of the Natural Step Principles, among other means.
Principles of ecopreneurship
There are some basic principles and measurements that can help guide the practice of ecopreneurs and provide some basic standards of principle to this emerging group.
Energy and Resource Use Efficiency and Maximization
Best described by Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute,
“In nature, one-way linear flows do not long survive. Nor, by extension, can they long survive in the human economy that is a part of the earth's ecosystem. The challenge is to redesign the materials economy so that it is compatible with the ecosystem.”
By minimizing waste production and maximizing reuse of waste streams, sustainable business can potentially significantly increase profits. Key aspects to measure include:
Reduction in solid waste
Reduction in liquid waste
Reduction in wastewater
Reduction in air pollution
Reduction in energy usage
Reduction in carbon emissions resulting from reduced transportation
Reduction in hazardous chemical usage
Reduction in excess product supply
Reuse of industry waste as enterprise raw material
Sustainability of raw materials (ability to consistently source raw material without reducing raw material supply or negatively impacting ecosystem)
Ecosystem services
Nature is a storehouse of raw materials. We use these materials as the base of the products and services that we trade as human beings, and they are therefore valued in our current economic system. However the global ecosystem provides additional services that are indispensable to economies, such as mitigation of droughts and floods, soil generation, and waste detoxification and breakdown. Though these services are critical for ongoing economic sustainability, they services do not traditionally have monetary value in the economy and therefore have not been considered in business finances. In recent years economists have begun to recognize and explore the value of nature’s services, as more and more frequently businesses and economies are losing income and growth potential due to environmental degradation. This has resulted in the development of markets for carbon, biodiversity, and water. These marketplaces provide opportunity for small businesses to gain income from protecting local resources and preventing environmental damage, a service that helps ensure our continued economic well-being. On a more individual, entrepreneurial level, reflecting upon the ecosystem services in our lives and in our community can be inspiration for a green business idea and/or green business practice.
Natural Step Principles
The Natural Step framework provides a way for leaders to see "risks" as new opportunities for success. These include the following, and you can read more about each at The Natural Step Website
In order for a society to be sustainable:
Nature's functions and diversity are not systematically subject to increasing concentrations of substances extracted from the earth's crust.
Nature's functions and diversity are not systematically subject to increasing concentrations of substances produced by society.
Nature's functions and diversity are not systematically impoverished by physical displacement, over-harvesting, or other forms of ecosystem manipulation.
People are not subject to conditions that systematically undermine their capacity to meet their needs.
Eco-Efficiency and Eco-Effectiveness
Eco-efficiency was initially coined by the World Business Council on Sustainable Development to describe methods of decreasing waste while increasing productivity. William McDonough’s design firm, MBDC, takes that a step further to reflect cradle-to-cradle thinking of waste equaling food. Under this model, eco-effectiveness refers to “industrial systems that emulate the healthy abundance of nature” so that the waste of the production process and the product itself can be the raw materials of a new product or service.
Lloyd Dorfman is a British entrepreneur and philanthropist. He founded the business that became the Travelex Group, today the world's largest non-bank foreign exchange business. He was appointed CBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours list for services to business and charity.
Having briefly sampled the bar and investment banking, Dorfman started his own currency exchange business in 1976 from one small shop in central London. Following the £440m acquisition of Thomas Cook's Global & Financial Services business in March 2001, the Travelex Group has now become the world's largest non-bank foreign exchange business.
In 2001 Dorfman was the winner of the Consumer Business Category in the UK "Entrepreneur of the Year" awards sponsored by Ernst & Young, Citibank and The Times. In 2002 he received the British American Chamber of Commerce's UK Entrepreneurial Award, and the Institute of Economic Affairs' Free Enterprise Award. In 2008 Dorfman was appointed CBE in the Queens Birthday Honours list for services to business and charity.
He is a Non-Executive Director of M & C Saatchi plc, a Governor of St Paul's School, London, Deputy Chairman of Quest Limited, Chairman of the Roundhouse, a Director of the Royal National Theatre, a Trustee of the Prince’s Trust, and an Honorary Fellow of St Peter’s College, Oxford.
Dorfman, who is Jewish, was educated at St Paul's School, and did not go to university. He is married with three children, two grandchildren, and lives in London.
Odd Gleditsch, Sr. (2 October 1894 – 17 January 1990) was a Norwegian business entrepreneur. The founder of the paint company Jotun, he began as a paint distributor but then turned to manufacturing the paint himself. He was CEO of the company from 1926 to 1967.
Personal life
He was born in Sandefjord as a son of whaler Einar S. Gleditsch (1862–1913) and Maren Olea Kverne (1862–1933). He was a second cousin of Rolf, Ellen, Kristian and Henry Gleditsch, and a first cousin once removed of Kristen Gran Gleditsch and Jens Gran Gleditsch.
In 1921 he married merchant's daughters Fanny Vibetoe (1900–1973). His son Odd Gleditsch, Jr. took over the company leadership in Jotun, retiring as CEO in 1979.
Career
After finishing middle school he spent six seasons as a whaler in the Southern Ocean.Whaling was the foremost business in his hometown Sandefjord.However, during World War I stock market speculation became more lucrative. Gleditsch tried his luck from 1916, but the market crashed in 1918. In 1920 he opened shop as a colourman and seller of ship equipment. In 1926 he saw an opportunity to manufacture the paint he sold, as he took over the factory Jotun from Johan Bryde. The factory had gone bankrupt in 1925, but was now resurrected under the name Jotun Kemiske Fabrik.
In 1931 the product Arcanol was introduced, starting the upward trend for Jotun. The company opened a research laboratory in 1950, and expanded with factories in the Kingdom of Libya in 1962 and Thailand in 1967. In 1967 Odd Gleditsch, Jr. became CEO. Gleditsch Sr. continued as a board member until 1971.In 1972, through a merger, Jotun Kemiske Fabrik changed its name to Jotun.
He was also a board member of the Federation of Norwegian Industries and Framnæs Mekaniske Værksted, chairman of Privatbanken i Sandefjord and A/S Kosmos and honorary member of the Norwegian Association of Hunters and Anglers. In 1965 he was decorated as a Knight, First Class of the Royal Norwegian Order of St. Olav. He died in January 1990 in Sandefjord.
Leslie Gonda is a business man and entrepreneur and Holocaust survivor who moved to South America and later moved to Los Angeles, United States. He started ILFC, the second largest airliner leasing company in the world which pioneered the aircraft operating lease. He donated the learning center wing of the holocaust museum, contributor to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, Gonda Diabetes Center at the UCLA Medical Center, the City of Hope Cancer Center and other medical related organizations and is known for his generosity in donating gold coins to his employees' children.
