SOME TYPICAL ENTREPRENEURS?

The Cultural Diversity of Entrepreneurship

As we have seen, virtually anyone has the potential to become an entrepreneur. Indeed, diversity
is a hallmark of entrepreneurship. We now explore the diverse mix of people who make up the
rich fabric of entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneurial atmosphere 

Young Entrepreneurs

Young people are embracing entrepreneurship enthusiastically as a career choice. A recent survey
by the Kauffman Foundation reports that 40 percent of young people between the ages of 8 and
24 have already started a business or would like to do so in the future. The top five reasons these
young people want to start their own businesses include the opportunity to use their skills and
abilities, build something for their future, be their own bosses, earn lots of money, and see their
ideas realized. Although entrepreneurial activity tends to increase with age, many members of the
Millennial generation (or Generation Y, those people born between 1982 and 2000) show high
levels of interest in entrepreneurship. Disenchanted with their prospects in corporate America
and willing to take a chance at controlling their own destinies, scores of young people are choosing
entrepreneurship as their initial career path. People between the ages of 15 and 29, nearly
64 million strong, are deciding that owning their own companies is the best way to create job
security and to achieve the balance between work and life that they seek. “People are realizing
they don’t have to go to work in suits and ties and don’t have to talk about budgets every day,”
says Ben Kaufman, founder of Mophie, a company (named after his golden retrievers, Molly and
Sophie) that he started at age 18 while still in high school that makes iPod accessories such as cases,
armbands, and belt clips. “They can have a job they like. They can create a job for themselves.”91
Because of young people such as Kaufman, the future of entrepreneurship looks very bright.

Women Entrepreneurs

Despite years of legislative effort, women still face discrimination in the workforce. However,
small business has been a leader in offering women opportunities for economic expression
through entrepreneurship. Increasing numbers of women are discovering that the best way to
break the “glass ceiling” that prevents them from rising to the top of many organizations is to start
their own companies. Women entrepreneurs have even broken through the comic strip barrier.
Blondie Bumstead, long a typical suburban housewife married to Dagwood, now owns her own
catering business with her best friend and neighbor Tootsie Woodly!
The number of women-owned businesses is growing 1.5 times faster than the national average.92
Women now own 30.4 percent of all privately held businesses in the United States, but their companies
generate just 11 percent of business sales.93 Although women-owned businesses are smaller
business plans. “It’s often over those late-night pizzas where the
best ideas are born,” says one official. One student entrepreneur
in the program agrees: “A lot of it is the community. Being around
people in the [entrepreneurship] program inspires one to think
about other opportunities out there.

How to plan

What I’ve learned here is
how to plan, how to make a business actually work.”
1. In addition to the normal obstacles of starting a business,
what other barriers do collegiate entrepreneurs face?
2. What advantages do collegiate entrepreneurs have when
launching a business?
3. What advice would you offer a fellow college student about
how to start a business?
4. Work with a team of your classmates to develop ideas about
what your college or university could do to create a culture
of entrepreneurship on your campus or in your community.

Relationship between small business and entrepreneurship

The term "entrepreneur" is often conflated with the term "small business" or used interchangeably with this term. While most entrepreneurial ventures start out as a small business, not all small businesses are entrepreneurial in the strict sense of the term. Many small businesses are sole proprietor operations consisting solely of the owner, or they have a small number of employees, and many of these small businesses offer an existing product, process or service, and they do not aim at growth. In contrast, entrepreneurial ventures offer an innovative product, process or service, and the entrepreneur typically aims to scale up the company by adding employees, seeking international sales, and so on, a process which is financed by venture capital and angel investments. Successful entrepreneurs have the ability to lead a business in a positive direction by proper planning, to adapt to changing environments and understand their own strengths and weakness.

Ethnic entrepreneurship

The term ethnic entrepreneurship refers to self-employed, business owners who belong to racial or ethnic minority groups in the United States and Europe. A long tradition of academic research explores the experiences and strategies of ethnic entrepreneurs as they strive to integrate economically into mainstream US or European society. Classic cases include Jewish merchants and tradespeople in large U.S. cities in the 19th and early 20th centuries as well as Chinese and Japanese small business owners (restaurants, farmers, shop clerks) on the West Coast.

In the 2010s, ethnic entrepreneurship has been studied in the case of Cuban business owners in Miami, Indian motel owners of the U.S. and Chinese business owners in Chinatowns across the United States. While entrepreneurship offers these groups many opportunities for economic advancement, self-employment, and business ownership in the United States remain unevenly distributed along racial/ethnic lines. Despite numerous success stories of Asian entrepreneurs, a recent statistical analysis of U.S. census data shows that whites are more likely than Asians, African-Americans, and Latinos to be self-employed in high prestige, lucrative industries.

Institutional entrepreneur

The USA-born British economist Edith Penrose has highlighted the collective nature of entrepreneurship. She mentions that in modern organizations, human resources need to be combined in order to better capture and create business opportunities. The sociologist Paul DiMaggio (1988:14) has expanded this view to say that "new institutions arise when organized actors with sufficient resources [institutional entrepreneurs] see in them an opportunity to realize interests that they value highly". The notion has been widely applied.

Feminist entrepreneur

A feminist entrepreneur is an individual who applies feminist values and approaches through entrepreneurship, with the goal of improving the quality of life and wellbeing of girls and women. Many are doing so by creating ‘for women, by women’ enterprises.’ Feminist entrepreneurs are motivated to enter commercial markets by desire to create wealth and social change, based on the ethics of cooperation, equality, and mutual respect.Courtesy of wikipedia......