The Economist on Entrepreneurship

Here's a special report from The Economist on the rise of interest in entrepreneurship. This multi-part report includes a section on social entrepreneurship. The opening material points out that the growing interest is fed in part by myriad programs at universities as well as by inspiring personal examples such as "business hero" Oprah Winfrey (nice to read this: entrepreneurs are often vilified: sometimes rightly, too often inappropriately).

Economist Joseph Schumpeter called the entrepreneurial process creative destruction: the entrepreneur identifies a new product or service or figures out how to provide an existing product or service more quickly, more cheaply, otherwise more easily. The Economist suggests this is something of a misnomer: entrepreneurs are really involved in creative creation.

Either way, more and more people involved in international development recognize that the entrepreneur can be a kind of hero: someone who seizes opportunities, innovates, is a great problem solver, takes risks, and brings desirable products to market. These are special skills and not everyone has them (I certainly don't).

If the theme is appealing you might like this essay which was written by Candace Allen and published by the Dallas Fed. On a different note, this blog post poses the question "is every African Entrepreneur a Social Entrepreneur?" and suggests that African entrepreneurs have a different sense of "society" than do western (presumably Asian?) entrepreneurs, hhhmmm. Hope you enjoy.

- Karol