Entrepreneurial Drive: Has it lost its vroom?
Dictionaries define entrepreneurs as people who organize, manage, and assume the risk of a business with the goal of generating economic value. The term is derived from the Old French verb entreprendre, “to undertake.” The 20th-century American economist Joseph Schumpeter introduced the term “entrepreneur-spirit,” to describe a driving force of innovation that revolutionizes economic structures and thereby fosters constant economic change. In his view, a healthy economy depends on the dynamic disequilibrium initiated by entrepreneurs.
But in the West, there are signs we have fallen out of love with the idea of becoming an entrepreneur. Amrop's latest global study, The Meaning of Work, in exploring attitudes to work around the world, shows that the desire to be an entrepreneur in countries like Germany, the UK and the US, has dropped sharply in recent years.
If true, what does this say about the companies of the future? And what of our careers within them?
