Ledelse og Erhvervsøkonomi/Handelsvidenskabeligt Tidsskrift/Erhvervsøkonomisk Tidsskrift, Bind 49 (1985) 1Erhvervsøkonomisk debatTo understand Entrepreneurship We need both "entrepreneurship" and»the understanding of and for entrepreneurship« Björn Bjerke *) Arild Borg **) Curt Kihlstedt ***) Krister Skånberg ****) Side 51
IntroductionThe need for development and renewal, for new business and entrepreneurship, is great both within industry and public activities. All agree on this and many speak about it. There are also many ideas, and many individuals who want to apply them and even - this is sometimes said - enough resources that can be invested in these risky operations. The conditions for new business or renewal the old one seem to be good. However, one is still not satisfied with the result. More entrepreneurship is needed, one says, better entrepreneurship, fewer failures etc. and so it continues as before, with »more of the same kind«, but still the result will not be much better (1) How can this problem be attacked? We mean that what is needed is a (new and better) understanding og entrepreneurship and, above all, of entrepreneurs. It is our hope and faith that we as scientists - looked upon as analysts, observers or actors - can create theories for understanding entrepreneurship and models for using in such situations, theories that will work in practice. In our opinion,
some fundamental bases to build on in order to acquire
*) Ekon. dr., professor, Department of Business Administration, University of Lund, Sweden. **) MBA, lecturer, Hedemarks Distriktshoyskole, Norway. ***) Ekon. dr., professor, Department of Business Administration, University of Lund, Sweden. ****) Fil. lic, business consultant, Albatross 78, Lund, Sweden. Side 52
1. The
entrepreneur creates business either by starting new
companies 2. The
entrepreneur interacts with his environment (is
influenced by 3. The environment
for entrepreneurs are different and they can 4. There are
different kinds of entrepreneurs. These fundamental
bases give us reason to put a number of questions
a) How do we
describe an entrepreneur? If the environment wants to
b) How do we describe the way the entreneur influences his environment? How do we describe the way the environment influences the entrepreneur? What existing environment is suitable for an entrepreneur? (What »soil« is suitable for »cultivation«?) c) How do we
improve the environment? How to find and develop
d) What types of
entrepreneurs can it be appropriate to distinquish?
We believe that a categorization of entrepreneurs into different types is basic, essential and useful. It gives us better possibilities to evaluate different ways to act and will give a more modulated and practical research and development. This paper (which
is also a part of a larger work) will henceforth - produce some
characteristics of the different types of entrepreneurs,
The relationships between the concept of creativity, innovation and entrepreneurshipThe concepts of
creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship are often
Side 53
their meanings.
They have to do with different side and levels of the
Creativity can be
manifested through a process in which something
Entrepreneurship is an overlapping conception that means both creativity and innovation, but also the continuéition and direction of the process. From this follows that the entrepreneur is not only creative and innovative, he also carries out the idea in practice. New products and f or new systems come into existence (2). We want to
summarize our conceptions in the following figure:
Note that in our
definition of and research into entrepreneurship we
Side 54
concentrate
on the end products of the process, i.e. that new
products Different kinds of entrepreneurs - with examplesIf the idea of what is new is the result of existing activities in a company (or another kind og organization), the person who gets the idea and has the characteristics of an entrepreneur can choose to realize his idea within this company. Then we call him fher an intrapreneur, internal actor, of company renewer {?>). Extrapreneur,
external actor,.or outlaw we call the one who instead
Novopreneur or
ego actor we call the entrepreneur who gets an idea
Both the novopreneur and the extrapreneur - unlike the intrepreneur - do start new companies. What separates them is the origin of the idea. Another type of person starting a new company is the interpreneur, integrator or procurer. That is what we call the person who realizes new possibilities of business by combining the necessary resources from different quarters, e.g. from a couple of smaller companies, through mergers or by joint ventures. There are reasons to distinguish an additional type of entrepreneur. It is a matter of taste and it differs from case to case whether to say it is somebody who starts a new company or news an old one. We are referring to a renovateur, renovator or company saviour, i.e. the individual or group who save a company that is not functioning well by taking cares of at least some of existing human and other types of resources and adding something new. A variant of this theme which is not unusual today consists of those companies which are run and owned by employees. Below is a
concrete example of each type of entrepreneurship.
1.
INTERPRENEURSHIP - Trellfax Co. Within the enterprise
TrelleborgCo Side 55
rubber powder from waste rubber, especially from worn-out tyres. The rubber powder produced this way can be directly used in rubber mixturesbut also be processed into what is called a regenerate, that can replace raw rubber in many products. Retrieval is in.
This combined with problems of employment made the
2. EXTRAPRENEURSHIP - Cobra fControl and Guard Group Co. Cobra is a guarding company in the Swedish town of Lund, employing 10 individuals, most of them guards by profession. The main working area is to check super markets, which covers almost half of the work. George Lantz, the founder and owner of the company, was earlier employed by Sweden's largest service, United Security Co. Because of disappointments resulting from the fact that no promotion was forthcoming and because of difficulties in putting his new ideas (inter alia possibilities to use dogs in his service) into practice he left the large combine 1968 and started on his own. 3. NOVOPRENEURSHIP - Scan Coin Co. The company started in 1966 in Malmoe (Sweden) by manufacturing coin counters. Scan Coin Co has today widened its line to also include other products, which its main customers, banks, are using. Today the company has over 100 employees and a turnover of 50 million Swedish crowns. Its largest market is on export side, which last year led to the company receiving the Export Prize. The reason why Scan Coin was started was based upon the idea of three people, of a coin counting machine that should be fast, simple and reliable. The three founders each had his area of competence, one salesman knowing a potential market, one production engineer with experience in manufacturing and one civil engineer specializing in electronics. That they succeeded was mainly due to the strong faith in their own business concept. 4. INTERPRENEURSHIP - Scandinavian Fast Building Systems Co. This company was founded 1975 as a cooperation between four smaller companies on export of wooden houses to the Middle East. The possibilities were created by the fact that Side 56
demand for wooden
houses in the Middle East was greatly increasing,
governmental
support in the form of a subsidy was offered,
5. RENOVATEURSHIP - Blacksmith Construction Co. 1975 the company of H.L. Olsson Steel Construction Co was in a prolonged period depression. The order stock and profitability was dropping. 1978 the tendency continued. At the end of this year the management decided after negotiation with the labour union to close the factory. The personnel was however convinced that the operation could continue if it was restructed into new localities and on a smaller scale. Trygghetsrådet SAF-PTK*) was contacted through the local union. An investigation was made into the possibilities of the company. A smaller number of previous employees contributed capital and applied for support from the Development Fund. The company, which
is today called Blacksmith Construction Co, is Characteristics of different types of entrepreneursThe different groups of entrepreneurs contained in our study have some different characteristics. The character schetch below is based on some indicators in our work but in several respects it is both hypothetical and speculative. The intrapreneur is a person, who actuates development and renewal within the framework of existing organizations. He often works hard but not with the intensity of for example the novopreneur, the extrapreneurand the renovateur. He is psychologically stable, aware of his role and very often has collegues assisting to calculate business risks. He is not such a lonely wolf as several of the other types of entrepreneurs.In *) A Swedish national council for the secure employment of white collar workers, run by employers' and employees' unions and financed by funds from individual companies raised by central agreement. Side 57
preneurs.Inspite of his
framework he has often the ability to improviseand,
The extrapreneur is a creative and stubborn person, who has the ability to develop his sometimes relatively »limited« idea. He is like the novopreneur in his egocentricity, energy and mental disposition but might not be so psychologically stable. He has a strong drive for going his own way and often calculates his risks carefully and gradually before he starts on his own. The novopreneur has often greater creative ability than the rest, he is determined to work hard and he is physically strong. He has a great need of attention, which often makes him reveal both his personality and his ideas. He goes his own way, create his own rules and conditions. He has the ability to see the simple facts and the important aspects of all situations. The interpreneur is creative, works hard and calculates the consequences of what he considers entering. In order to connect different operations he should be able to improvise and be broad-sighted. He often develops rules to which other people must subordinate themselves. He is and should be profit-orientered, at the same time as he himself has a strong desire for good economic returns. The renovateur often has a short time to act and lives under some psychological pressure. His strenght lies in his will-power to cut off unsuccessful »branches« at the same time as he can plant new ideas and develop vital parts of the former situation. He works very hard, is psychologically strong and stable and also energetic. He has also a need for quick results. He often has the ability to improvise, go his own way by creating his own rules and conditions. We are aware that
the statements above contain several questionable
Entrepreneurial rolesLet us under this
title summarize some results from our studies. Space
— The statistics
indicate that most new companies are of the
extrapreneurial — The industry
claims that the most important technical developments
Side 58
- Many factors
indicate that pure novopreneurs are becoming more
- Interpreneurs
are often present in export connection. - Renovateurs are
becoming more and more salient and necessary. - Sometimes
entrepreneurs change roles, e.g. from an
intrapreneurship - It is still a partly unanswered question as to how much entrepreneurship is going on in a group and how much is going on individually. Our results indicate that the individual model is mostly pronounced by extrapreneurs and novopreneurs. - There is a
difference between entrepreneurs in large companies and
The value of our frame of referenceAll
classifications have their weaknesses. However, as long
as they There are many myths around entrepreneurship. A great deal of research has missed1 the dynamic aspects in such processes and, above all, the necessity to be contingent. We believe that our classification can contribute to a more precise, practical and individual understanding of the entrepreneurial situations and thereby give many advantages — in the
understanding of earlier research on entrepreneurship
and to - when designing
education and further training in business
administration, - to
entrepreneurs understanding themselves and others, - to society
influencing the development of our new companies and
Litteratur(I)Hedberg, B.
& Sjdstrand, S.E: Från foretagskriser till
industripolitik, Liber, Malmo 1979. (2) Copulsky, W.
& McNulty, H. W. Entrepreneurship & the
Corporation, AMACOM, New York (3)Macrae,
Norman: »Intrapreneurial now«, The Economist April 17,
1982. |