The blind men and the elephant

When we think about entrepreneurship, we commonly conjure the image of an individual setting up a new business or venture, taking risks and hoping for financial reward. It is certainly true that it is often such individuals who spot opportunities and initiate the entrepreneurial process (Nielsen et al. 2017), but that isn’t the whole story.

This is a little like the parable of the six blind men and the elephant – we often base our views on partial information and project these experiences as whole truths.

In this course, we ask you to consider that you may be partially right and may have incomplete information on what it means to be an entrepreneur.

To broaden the discussion, we will explore entrepreneurship through a range of lenses and in doing so, hopefully widen your perspective of what entrepreneurship might be in general and what it might mean to you.

Your task

Watch the video and consider if entrepreneurship is a little like this for you. We only ever get to see part of it and so our view is often skewed by a limited perception.

How would you define entrepreneurship based on your experience so far? What experiences have shaped your understanding?

Share your ideas in the comments. Explore what other learners are saying and reply with your own thoughts

Reference

_{Nielsen, S.L., Klyver, K., Evald, M.R. and Bager, T., (2017) Entrepreneurship in Theory and Practice: Paradoxes in Play. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing.}