- 1.0 Introduction
- 1.1 The Entrepreneur
- 1.2 Entrepreneurial Dreams and Their Outcomes
- 1.3 There Is No One Narrative
- 1.4 Collective Dreams
- 1.5 Why Entrepreneurship Became Important
- 1.6 Challenging Assumptions?Entrepreneurship Is for All
- 1.7 Entrepreneurial Environments
- 1.8 National Innovation Systems for Entrepreneurs
- 1.9 Entrepreneurs: Made or Born
- 1.10 Who Is an Entrepreneur?
- 1.11 The Entrepreneurial Personality
- 1.12 Entrepreneurial Mindset
- 1.13 Defining Entrepreneurship: It All Depends
- 1.14 Opportunity Recognition
- 1.15 Entrepreneurial Goals
- 1.16 Different Goals for Different Folks
- 1.17 Other Definitional Issues
- 1.18 The Self-Employed as Entrepreneurs
- 1.19 A False Dichotomy
- 1.20 Do Goals Differentiate?
- 1.21 Opportunity and the Entrepreneur
- 1.22 Exercises
- 1.23 Advanced Exercises
- References
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
1.16 Different Goals for Different Folks
Then there is the fact that an entrepreneur may be in it for entirely different reasons than creating wealth. Creating a venture may come from the bare necessity of finding a way of getting food on the table or supporting a family (a necessity entrepreneur), think of our Persian Jews mentioned earlier. Becoming an entrepreneur may be driven by a desire to generate collective wealth—social wealth—the idea of doing well for someone else. In fact, in some cultures individual entrepreneurship is frowned upon as you may be risking the very survival of your family or the community if you fail. Thus, entrepreneurship becomes a community decision and activity.
There is also the reality that for personal reasons, such as increasing ones quality of life (a very subjective definition), an individual may adopt a life style form of entrepreneurship, which is different from those who focus on earning lots of money. Perhaps it is the desire to be able to continue living in one’s rural home town, rather than having to move to the big city? Perhaps it is a desire to turn a hobby into a living, for example, a person hooked on surfing or downhill skiing deciding to create a store specializing in surfboards, snow boards, and downhill skis? Perhaps it is a desire to cure a disease, certainly a noble pursuit. The issue is whether the goal set is what really defines success, but is more that is mentioned later in this book. Through this book we give short examples and cases of different types of entrepreneurs to demonstrate that entrepreneurs come in all genders, races, ethnic groups, nationalities, and ages. To us what makes an entrepreneur is attitude, part of an entrepreneurial mindset.