What is the role of the Entrepreneur?

I often ask my students, what is the role of management?

Those students that have listened and have mastered the short answers to almost every question will answer correctly as follows:

“The role of management is to allocate recourses.” Or

“The role of management is to maximize shareholder value.”

Both answers are correct, as both answers have at their center - corporate resources. If management is to allocate resources it must do it in such a way as to maximize shareholder value.

What are the resources of the enterprise or the corporation? The answers are many and varied.
1. Capital
2. Inventory
3. Personnel
4. Physical Assets such as Buildings, equipment, tools and raw materials.

The list can be quite long

But, where did these resources come from? Did they just appear out of thin air?

This simple question is often is met with a blank stare, an indication that few have ever questioned where recourses were, before they were part of the enterprise or corporation. Clearly they were somewhere.

Where were they?

The answer is simple.
Before these resources were part of their current enterprise they belonged to someone else and were being underutilized. These resources were not being used to their highest potential. In real estate terms, this is called the “highest and best use.” We see this everywhere. It may be an employee that has skills that are not being used by the company. It may be a product that could be modified and sold to a different market. It may be an entire company that is poorly run and yet with a change in management, the company has the potential of significantly higher returns.

An entrepreneur recognized and envisioned a higher use for these resources.

There simply is not a company, corporation, or enterprise of any kind that was not started by an entrepreneur. No company has as its beginning corporate "spontaneous generation." Each company that exists today, each and every company, enterprise or co op, regardless of its size, had at its beginning an entrepreneur.

Some of these entrepreneurs may not see their role in the creation of the company, other may not view themselves as the creator, but, non the less, someone stepped forward and got the company going.

While the role of the Entrepreneur is widely misunderstood in society as a risk all promoter, or as a naive geek who quite by accident has a thriving business. The actual role of the entrepreneur is quite different.

The role of the Entrepreneur is to be that spark that ignites a idea into a working plan; the courage to lend his/her personal reputation to give life to the enterprise, the ablity to gather resources and increase their values.

After the entreprenuer, the baby is born, and then management takes over.