Does ‘entrepreneurship’ exist?

ABSTRACT

The word ‘entrepreneurship’ appears to have been coined in the early twentieth century. Later, because there was a word for it and, following Birch’s identification of small businesses as the creators of net new jobs, because there was perceived to be a need for it, people came to believe that a deterministic condition called entrepreneurship existed. To establish its credibility, especially as an academic subject, researchers have sought to define it and establish how it operates – but this search has produced more questions than answers and has neither uniquely defined it nor identified its ‘rules’. Therefore, it should probably be concluded that it does not exist as the condition that people have conceived it to be – and consequently one should stop using the word because it serves to confuse, mislead and misdirect.

KEYWORDS:

• Entrepreneurship
• definitions
• misdirection
• confusion
• non-existence

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Simon Bridge has served as the Enterprise Development Director of a small business support agency, as an enterprise and economic development consultant, and as a visiting professor at Ulster University Business School since he first became involved in the enterprise field over thirty years ago. He has written or co-written several books about aspects of enterprise, including text books and a critique of enterprise policy.