Page 20 - 1-Entrepreneurship and Local Economic Development by Norman Walzer (z-lib.org)

Introduction and Overview 9

First, entrepreneurship does not relate only to business start-ups. Large
businesses can be just as entrepreneurial in approach, and managers of
these businesses can be considered entrepreneurs. Perhaps the deciding cri-
terion in defining entrepreneurship or an entrepreneurial approach, as dis-
cussed by Brian Dabson in chapter 2, is that an investor or manager takes
an innovative approach to addressing an issue and does something differ-
ently from past practices.
Also true is that small businesses can be started and can even succeed
without following especially entrepreneurial practices. The market may
adopt some businesses when the timing is right for a specific product or ser-
vice. While this differentiation may not seem important, it does mean that
practitioners must try to identify and foster potential business investors
who are willing to take risks, have an innovative approach, and who are
willing to do something markedly different and/or better than what previ-
ously was done. These entrepreneurs may already be in business or may be
launching a new venture.
Second, the terms small businesses and microenterprises are used fre-
quently in this volume. The Small Business Administration considers
small businesses those with 500 or fewer employees (Crain 2005). Devins
(1999) and Kangasharju (2001) use ten employees as a cut-off. The terms
microenterprise or microbusiness are used in subsequent discussions to de-
scribe very small businesses such as those in which the owner has no em-
ployees or has four employees or less according to the Association of En-
terprise Opportunity (AEO) (2006). Woods and Muske (chapter 10)
discuss the issue of business size in more detail and show how mi-
crobusinesses should be considered a subset of small businesses with spe-
cial needs for assistance.

BOOK THEMES

Discussions in this volume address several main themes of interest to local
practitioners considering an entrepreneurship development approach.
Clearly not all of the issues surrounding entrepreneurship are discussed
but, to the extent possible, those important for local practitioners are iden-
tified and applied in the best practices section.

Innate Ability versus Training
For many years, the prevailing view was that entrepreneurs are born
rather than trained. To some extent, this attitude may have slowed the ac-
ceptance of entrepreneurship as a development strategy because it implies
that relatively little could be done to promote or develop entrepreneurs.