Becoming an Entepreneur
Young entrepreneurs are the future atlases of the world. But Becoming an entrepreneur requires heroic ambition in pursuit of one’s vision, not of what is but what could be. So why become an entrepreneur? Is it for fame and fortune? What’s the incentive? What’s the motivation? What form should the enterprise take, a for profit, a nonprofit or a social enterprise? These are the questions these essays will address for the Objectivist Entrepreneur.
“Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision.”
Ayn Rand
1 – Why Become an Entrepreneur?
Why would anyone want to become an entrepreneur? Is it for the opportunity to acquire wealth? Is it for the fame and recognition from one’s peers and society? Such are the reasons often attributed to why someone would want to become an entrepreneur. Some entrepreneurs do achieve them, even though the majority does not. Here are some sobering statistics. “20% of small businesses fail in their first year, 30% of small businesses fail in their second year, and 50% of small businesses fail after five years in business. Finally, 70% of small business owners fail by their 10th year in…
2 – Defining an Entrepreneur
An entrepreneur is often thought of as someone who launches a new venture entailing high risk with the potential of acquiring great wealth. Even though many entrepreneurs have become wealthy, entrepreneurship is about producing wealth, not acquiring it. Nor is entrepreneurship defined by the degree of risk one takes, but rather the creativity and productivity one achieves. Moreover, entrepreneurship need not be so grand. To be an entrepreneur one does not have to “make a dent in the universe” as Steve Jobs aspired to achieve. It is not the scale nor nature of the enterprise but rather the nature of the individual…
3 – Social Entrepreneurship – An Objective Perspective
Following is the “white paper” essay of the lecture Social Entrepreneurship – An Objective Perspective, given at the University of Victoria and the University of Calgary in 2020, which can be viewed on YouTube at https://youtu.be/g987nJy_n7c. Synopsis Enterprises are traditionally defined as either for-profit businesses or non-profit organizations. The social enterprise is a new classification of enterprise that blends generating profits with complementary social benefits. However, even for-profit and non-profit enterprises provide substantial social benefits, which make this factor alone insufficient to differentiate social enterprises from them; demanding other issues be considered. Unfortunately social entrepreneurship is ambiguously defined even by…