The description of Entrepreneurship given by Seth Godin in his post ‘The four elements of entrepreneurship‘ hit a nerve with me.
Basically Seth states that Entrepreneurship is a choice and that there are only 4 elements of entrepreneurship. According to him the rest can be hired:
- “Making decisions.
- Investing in activities and assets that aren’t a sure thing.
- Persuading others to support a mission with a non-guaranteed outcome.
- Embracing (instead of running from) the work of doing things that might not work (this one is the most amorphous, the most difficult to pin down and thus the juiciest)”
The interesting thing is that each element taken individually does not make much of an entrepreneur (for example, element 2 can also characterise a stock trader, who is generally not so much an entrepreneur). It is the (rare) combination of those four characteristics that make up the entrepreneur. An definitely, the fourth element is the hardest to apprehend.
Based on these elements, how much of an entrepreneur are you?
[illustration by Gapingvoid]
