What’s on for next week?

Our aim during this week has been to challenge your understanding of what it means to be an entrepreneur. This is quite a tall order given how complex and multi-dimensional the subject is.

The first thing we considered was the various perspectives or lenses that have shaped our understanding of entrepreneurship, and how these have changed over time. We looked at entrepreneurship through three lenses: economics, sociology and psychology. The roots of entrepreneurship were in economics and in many ways this remains a dominant perspective. As we saw through the work of Cantillon and Bentham, those historical perspectives continue to shine a light on current economic and social policy.

More recently, it is through the lenses of sociology and psychology that entrepreneurship research moved into the realms of the social sciences. Interests shifted into an exploration of what shaped the entrepreneur as a person, and how this person interacted with society. Through the lenses of sociology and psychology we see that entrepreneurs come in many shapes and sizes and contribute to society in a vast array of ways. We also see that society and social structure impacts upon the nature and styles of entrepreneurship in communities in different ways.

Having reflected on the above, we hope you start to reflect on your own understanding of what it means to be an entrepreneur and what type of entrepreneur you might be. The GET2 test is one way of reflecting on your own entrepreneurial preferences. A capacity for risk is one of the dimensions for consideration, but a brief glimpse into the issue of risk shows that this is more complex than it may first appear.

Next week

Next week we will continue to explore some of the issues we have introduced this week. We start by digging a little deeper into the GET2 test and link this back to the perspectives introduced this week. We will look at a range of entrepreneurial archetypes and consider if you must start a business to be considered entrepreneurial.

Entrepreneurship is often linked with financial success, but success comes in many forms. We will explore a range of ways to be successful in enterprise and entrepreneurship. We look forward to welcoming you back to Week 2.

Your task

What have you found to be good, useful or interesting this week?

Do you think your perspective on entrepreneurship is changing?