Entrepreneur vs. Business Owner? Which one are you?

Assigning goals to aspects of our lives is a common practice when the calendar page lands back at January. A renewed sense of hope gets us thinking about initiating change. We will be slimmer, fitter, spend more time with the kids, increase revenue by 10%, volunteer. In a sense, New Years’ resolutions spark an entrepreneurial spirit; we feel confident to innovate, improve, see an idea through to execution. 

 
According to economist, Richard Cantillon, who coined the term, an entrepreneur is a “person who is willing to help launch a new venture or enterprise and accept full responsibility for the outcome.” Jean Baptiste Say’s 19th century version is “one who undertakes an enterprise, especially a contractor, acting as intermediary between capital and labour.” 

Entrepreneurs are thought to craft ideas that will change the future–whether it is a product or service offering that will not only add competition to the market place, but change an industry in some way. In the commonly referred to case of Apple, Steve Jobs was a business owner as well as an entrepreneur. Along with his team, he was always “creating the future” of the digital business. 

There are also what are called Social Entrepreneurs; they build a business that makes profit used to pave the way to social change. For example, John Wood, founder of  HYPERLINK "http://www.roomtoread.org/" Room to Read, is a social entrepreneur, opening libraries and schools in nine developing countries around the world. Lifestyle entrepreneurs are also becoming more common, defined as someone who puts passion before profit, and uses a business model in which their talent can grow in its own niche, not necessarily to be sold to shareholders. This could describe anyone from novelist to creator of mobile phone apps. 

 
Business owners can fall under all of these descriptions, but not all people who own a business are entrepreneurs. And not every entrepreneur is a business owner.

What is the difference?
Where one is working to mitigate risk, the other welcomes it.

Entrepreneurs often find a way to change an industry through a business model, build the business, sell it, and move on to the next endeavor.

Also, entrepreneurs often create something from scratch; business owners may build their business from the ground up, but are also responsible for day-to-day operations, with little time for bringing new ideas, innovations, or technologies to fruition.  

Twist Image President, Mitch Joel says of entrepreneurs and business owners:
“For some, it will involve their ability to embrace a new business model, for others it will involve their ability to respect the business owner that they have become while still embracing their internal Entrepreneur (and letting that mindset roam free). Regardless, the future is not going to be established by the business owners of today. The future is going to be created by the entrepreneurs who have the vision, business mindset and courage to not fall into the business owner's mindset of mitigating risk and minimizing mistakes.”

There is a sense of entrepreneurs being more revered. They appear to pursue without fear, where business owners don’t have that luxury. Like Mr. Cantillon said, they are responsible for outcomes and have to be accountable to the bottom line.

As an owner, if you were to run your business with an entrepreneur’s approach, would you take on a different role in your business? Would you grow? Distill your service offering? Take the lead in your industry?

Perhaps to be both entrepreneur and business owner it takes a slight shift in identity. If you are an acceptor of failure, and willing, to, as my father used to say, “try, try again,” then step outside your business owner role and don’t let your entrepreneurial spirit dim this year. Now that’s a resolution.