Entrepreneurship - Definition

Entrepreneurship: A Working Definition - Thomas R. Eisenmann - HBS Faculty - Harvard Business Review: "What is entrepreneurship? You probably think that the answer is obvious, and that only an academic would bother to ask this question. As a professor, I suppose I am guilty of mincing words. But like the terms "strategy" and "business model," the word "entrepreneurship" is elastic. For some, it refers to venture capital-backed startups and their kin; for others, to any small business. For some, "corporate entrepreneurship" is a rallying cry; for others, an oxymoron. The history of the word "entrepreneurship" is fascinating and scholars have indeed parsed its meaning. I'll spare you the results, and focus instead on the definition we use at Harvard Business School. It was formulated by Professor Howard Stevenson, the godfather of entrepreneurship studies at HBS. According to Stevenson, entrepreneurship is the pursuit of opportunity beyond resources controlled."

Take It From A Successful Entrepreneur: No One Will Steal Your Big Idea | Cognoscenti: "Stealth mode in startups and secrecy in business are usually positioned as strategies of necessary isolation, but these actions are more often entrepreneurs’ responses to fear. Entrepreneurs enter stealth mode because they have an idea or technology that is, in their opinion, too young for public exposure. It’s a business strategy of secrecy and seclusion meant to avoid alerting competitors to pending products or ideas. These stealth entrepreneurs have one major fear: that their idea is so incredibly brilliant that anyone who catches wind of their game-changing innovations will surely try to run away with them. Exposure will not kill an idea. Fear, however, is the little death that shuts down innovation and smothers creativity. Many entrepreneurs quell this fear by quietly retreating into their shells, but they are making a big mistake. Strategic isolation might work when a startup has all the resources it needs to succeed, but this is almost never the case for early-stage entrepreneurs, and it is never the case for first time entrepreneurs."

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