Entrepreneurship and Communication cheat sheet

Key terms

Entrepreneur

A person who identifies a business opportunity, organises the resources (capital, labour, materials) needed to exploit it, and bears the risk of the venture in the expectation of a reward.

Entrepreneurship

The process of identifying, evaluating and exploiting a business opportunity by creating and organising a new venture, or renewing an existing one, under conditions of risk and uncertainty.

Intrapreneurship

Entrepreneurial behaviour practised by an employee inside an existing organisation, developing a new product, process or business line on the organisation's behalf rather than starting an independent venture.

Corporate entrepreneurship

The formal effort by an established company to encourage innovation, risk-taking and new-venture creation among its own staff, often through dedicated innovation units or internal venture funds.

Entrepreneurial culture

The shared values, attitudes and norms within a society or an organisation that encourage initiative, tolerate failure as part of learning, and reward innovation and independent enterprise.

Innovators

Introduce genuinely new products, processes or ways of doing business, often at the highest risk but also the greatest potential reward.

Drone

Resist change altogether, continuing to operate exactly as before even when the market or technology around them has moved on, and are typically the first to fail when conditions shift.

Fabian

Are cautious and slow to adopt a new idea, imitating a change only after strong evidence that competitors who adopted it first are succeeding.

Imitating

Copy innovations that another entrepreneur has already introduced and proven, adapting them to a new market, product line or geography rather than originating them.

Micro-environment

The factors close to the venture that the entrepreneur can influence directly: customers, suppliers, competitors, employees and the immediate local market.

Macro-environment

The wider factors the entrepreneur cannot control individually but must adapt to: the political and legal climate, the economy, social and demographic trends, technology, and the natural environment (often summarised as the PESTEL factors).