Ammon News - By Yusuf Mansur

Jordan is abuzz with the words “entrepreneur” and “entrepreneurship”, a positive development for individuals, institutions and the country. However, few would agree about the definition of an entrepreneur. Not knowing the meaning causes misconceptions that may be harmful to the development of the economy.

Before starting to write this article, which has been motivated by the thought-provoking dialogue on Urdunmubdi3.net (the Creative Jordan social network), I asked a few friends who come to their minds when I say entrepreneur. Almost everyone I asked immediately spouted the name of one Jordanian (his name will not be mentioned here but the reader may guess who he is). The person has so popularised the concept in Jordan, not only as a successful businessman but also as a policy interlocutor and effective contributor to the concept of corporate social responsibility. He is definitely owed a debt of gratitude since before him, we almost always thought that for one to be successful he had to have a government post or title.

But thinking that this person, an innovator in his own right and definitely a dynamic one-man venture capital fund by himself, whose hand appears in almost every smart investment, is the only manifestation of an entrepreneur makes for a dangerous route.

The word “entrepreneur” has become synonymous with rich, innovator, market leader, sophisticated, visionary, powerful and other equally big meanings. But this thinking is harmful to the effort of creating more entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship by glamorising the concept, making it less of a normal, ought-to-be common undertaking or behaviour and endowing it with hero worship, and thus a unique or unattainable status.

In general, the majority seems to confuse successful businessmen with entrepreneurs.

The word “entrepreneur” was, by the way, borrowed from French by the economist Richard Cantillon in the 1700s and coined by Jean-Baptiste Say in the 1800s to mean "one who undertakes an enterprise, especially a contractor, acting as intermediary between capital and labour".

According to Wikipedia, “an entrepreneur is a person who has possession of a new enterprise, venture or idea and assumes significant accountability for the inherent risks and the outcome.”

Currently, students of economics are taught that an entrepreneur is a person who organises the factors of production (land, labour, capital and technology) into a business entity, assumes all risks and uncertainties, and whose payment is profits. Therefore, this person is one who gathers labour through some contractual arrangement; employs capital in the form of buildings, machinery and tools; utilises a technology (which need not be a new invention and can be as simple as a way of doing something); purchases leases or rents natural resources; can either make a living through profits or lose her/his shirt in the process.

In short, an entrepreneur is someone who organises a business venture and assumes the risk for it. What this person isn’t, is a salaried employee of another - the person is self-employed!

So where do we meet this person? He is the child who convinced his mom to squeeze a few lemons, give him ice from her fridge, loan him a pitcher, leftover paper cups and an old box from the attic to display his wares upon, scribbled a sign that said “Cold lemonade for 10 piasters” and sold it to passers-by at a street corner.

We know many of these children and, believe it or not, they are entrepreneurs. I know one person who did exactly this when a child to support his family, and later became one of Jordan’s largest producers of ice cream. He learnt business skills without going to a business school or receiving an Ivy League education. At the age of 40, he started to learn to read.

To further emphasise a point, the person who started a falafel shop is an entrepreneur; the guy next door who learnt his trade as an apprentice mechanic and later, after saving enough money, opened his own mechanic shop is an entrepreneur.

Entrepreneurs are almost everywhere. Now, these entrepreneurs may not be as successful as Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, or our own hundreds of self-made millionaires. But they are as entrepreneurial.

Of course, there are types of entrepreneurs: social entrepreneurs (ones who start social enterprises), innovative entrepreneurs (those who come up with new ideas to do things better), etc. But they all an enterprise to do something.

So next time you hear of an entrepreneur, think of the simple guys all around us, the grocers, shop owners, and everyone who started a business, any kind of business. And remember, entrepreneurship is no guarantee of wealth or success. If all people who started a business became rich, no person would work for another. Hence, when my friend’s name comes to mind, when you hear the word “entrepreneur”, it is because he is a “successful” entrepreneur.

ymansur@enconsult.com

* Jordan Times