Redefining Entrepreneurship

A key part of understanding Kingdom innovation is your definition of entrepreneurship. To be honest, this has been a great challenge for me. One of the struggles I have continually had to work through is the idea that all innovators are entrepreneurs and all entrepreneurs own their own businesses.

The reason this assumption is challenging is that I'm not the business-starting type. I like to fit into a larger context and be a part of a team. I'm also don't have some of the savvy needed to run a business. So my thought immediately was, "I guess I'm just not an entrepreneur and if that is true maybe I am not a true innovator."

Since I edited a book on innovation and have been blogging on it for several years, you can imagine that this idea didn't sit too well. It was always one of those nagging things that I couldn't dismiss but I knew I just didn't have the full picture.

Well, recently I attended a seminar given by Mark Russell, a new friend who owns Russell Media. He has written a book called The Missional Entrepreneur and he provided some good insight. I will share several thoughts that he touched on in his talk over the next few blog posts.

But the one I want to focus on today is his definition of entrepreneurship. He defined it as . . . an innovative state of mind that results in productive action.


Lets break that down:

• innovative state of mind: That means that you are open to new ideas, asking questions and reframing the issues you face in unique new ways.
• results in productive action: That means that you take those ideas/questions/reframed issues and you do something with it.

I really love this definition because it does not mandate what kind of action results from your innovation. Instead it leaves that open to many contexts. That means you can be an entrepreneur inside an organization, on a team, or as you start your own effort.

I hope this is an encouragement to you as it was to me. Even if you will never start a business or run an organization, that has little to do with your ability to be an entrepreneur and innovator in your context.

So what do you think of Mark's definition?