ATD Level I
Entrepreneurship and Communication glossary
Every term this guide defines, A to Z, each with the chapter that teaches it. Open it when a word in a question is unfamiliar, and test yourself on it in the last week: cover the definition and say it in one sentence.
11 terms from the free first chapter
C
- 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.
D
- 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.
E
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
F
- 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.
I
- 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.
- Innovators
Introduce genuinely new products, processes or ways of doing business, often at the highest risk but also the greatest potential reward.
- 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.
M
- 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).
- Micro-environment
The factors close to the venture that the entrepreneur can influence directly: customers, suppliers, competitors, employees and the immediate local market.
The full glossary adds every term from the other 8 chapters, A to Z, each with the chapter that teaches it.