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10 Types of Entrepreneurship

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Everyone who is anyone is talking about entrepreneurship and many among them are aspiring entrepreneurs as well. However, many are still unsure about the true meaning of entrepreneurship.

What is entrepreneurship?

Entrepreneurship is the process of launching, developing and running a business including the financial risks associated with it. To put it even more simply, entrepreneurship is the inclination to start a new business venture.

Here’s an interesting video that talks about some of the most effective monetization strategies that successful entrepreneurs follow.

(Above video is a part of a more elaborate course on Academy by Appy Pie. To access the complete course, please Click Here, or continue reading below.)

Entrepreneurship is often thought of as a singular entity and majority of the people cannot fathom the possibility that there may be more than one type of entrepreneurship. Before addressing the question, how to be an entrepreneur, first let us talk about the types of entrepreneurship.

Listed below are 10 types of entrepreneurship that most successful entrepreneurs know about. Let’s take a closer look.

1. Technological entrepreneurship

The term ‘technological entrepreneurship’ is quite self-explanatory and refers to entrepreneurship in the intensively technological context. The process is often referred as technopreneurship as it is an amalgamation of technological and entrepreneurial skills. This is one of the newer types of entrepreneurship and needs the participants to be tech savvy, creative, smart, passionate, and have a healthy appetite for taking risks.

Here’s a brilliant video that can help you transition from tech whiz to a techpreneur and enter the arena of engineering entrepreneurship.

(Above video is a part of a more elaborate course on Academy by Appy Pie. To access the complete course, please Click Here, or continue reading below.)

2. Opportunistic entrepreneurship

Finding the opportunity and knowing how to convert them into an entrepreneurial venture is a skill and only successful entrepreneurs possess the skill. Any change, small or big, presents new opportunities and those that can identify these opportunities and use them timely can become great opportunistic entrepreneurs. This type of entrepreneurship banks upon identifying good opportunities, exploits them in time and executes them to turn them into entrepreneurial ventures.

Here’s an informative video that lists out passive income business opportunities.

(Above video is a part of a more elaborate course on Academy by Appy Pie. To access the complete course, please Click Here, or continue reading below.)

3. Social entrepreneurship

Social entrepreneurship is a type of social entrepreneurship that recognizes a social problem and then uses entrepreneurial skills, principles and processes to bring about a social change. Successful social entrepreneurs have the innovative potential of coming up with products and services or solutions to solve critical social problems and address the needs. Their goal lies in making the world a better place to live instead of creating wealth for the owners.

4. Intrapreneurship

In this type of entrepreneurship, an employee practices entrepreneurship within an organization to convert a viable idea into a business opportunity. These employees can even be leaders in an organization who are motivated and creative enough to innovate while owning up to the risks involved in entrepreneurship of any type. Intrapreneurship is often termed as Corporate Entrepreneurship, where there are formal structures are in place to encourage the possibility of profitability and growth. This is a great system for the corporate employees who feel demotivated by the run of the mill activities and responsibilities. These employees often look for opportunities to innovate in context of the mechanism, the product, or the processes to bring about a positive change in how things are done within the organization. Lack of such opportunities may cause them to leave the organization and start wondering how to become a successful entrepreneur. However, when nurtured, these employees can bring about profits and stronger systems within the organization. This is a win-win situation, both for the company and the employee.

There are of course risks associated with every business. Here’s a video that talks about different types of risks and risk tolerance.

(Above video is a part of a more elaborate course on Academy by Appy Pie. To access the complete course, please Click Here, or continue reading below.)

5. Incubative entrepreneurship

To understand what we mean by incubative entrepreneurship, you first need to understand what a business incubator is.

A business incubator is a company or an organization that provides a multitude of services to new businesses or startups. These services may include anything from management training to workspace, infrastructure, and even access to sponsors.

Incubative entrepreneurship has helped bring about some of the most famous entrepreneurs like Sean Rad the co-founder of Tinder, developed his app while working with incubator Hatch Labs.

Incubative entrepreneurship is a type of entrepreneurship that generates and nurtures new ideas and ventures in the organization. Here, the ideas are constructively executed to ensure profitability and revenue generation for the company or the organization.

An incubative entrepreneur or business incubator pursues and supports the new business to get the infrastructural help needed to promote creations and innovations.

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(Above video is a part of a more elaborate course on Academy by Appy Pie. To access the complete course, please Click Here, or continue reading below.)

6. Environmental entrepreneurship

Alternatively known as Green Entrepreneurship, environmental entrepreneurship is a type of entrepreneurship that involves a certain responsibility towards the environment while defining their goals and creating processes.

In recent times, environmental entrepreneurship has also begun to be referred to as ‘ecopreneurship’ – a term meant to define the process of implementing the principles of entrepreneurship to create a business that solves environmental challenges or work in a sustainable fashion.

7. Cultural entrepreneurship

This type of entrepreneurship can be a little difficult to put in words. This may involve aspects pertaining to culture, lifestyle or way of life, arts and the creative industries. Entrepreneurs who dabble with cultural entrepreneurship, assume responsibility for bringing about a cultural change. These cultural entrepreneurs possess a unique vision for bringing together cultural, social, human, and financial capital in order to generate revenue from a cultural activity. Cultural entrepreneurship has the potential of acting as the bridge between creative talents and their ability or lack thereof to market it.

8. Acquisitive entrepreneurship

It has often been observed that people with entrepreneurial skills may lack certain other skills or competencies that they may need for their entrepreneurial ventures. This is where acquisitive entrepreneurship has an edge. This type of entrepreneurship acquires things of value or achieves the competency level of the competitors. This particular trait adds sustainability to the entrepreneurial venture in a competitive environment.

9. Imitative entrepreneurship

This type of entrepreneurship imitates or mimics a product or service already functioning in the market, mostly under a franchise agreement. Imitative entrepreneurship is a great medium to help spread technology all over the world. There are many businesses, big ones who are innovators and have pockets deep enough to bring these innovations to market. For entrepreneurs or small startups, this presents a great opportunity to imitate existing businesses that are already successful and start their own business ventures.

10. Cyber entrepreneurship

Internet or the cyber world is a treasure trove of opportunity for people, companies, societies and bigger stakeholders. The world of internet has made it possible to make business transactions through personal computers or even smartphones. Cyber entrepreneurship or netpreneurship is the process of identifying and bringing together relevant resources to transform a promising opportunity into a profitable online business. Startups or new businesses have begun noticing the reach and potential of internet and started preferring the online realm over brick and mortar establishments. This type of entrepreneurship involves acquiring, engaging, and retaining customers through social platforms or other portals related to the organization, like a website or an ecommerce app.

Conclusion

As an aspiring entrepreneur, it is important that you make yourself aware of the business environment and the trends in the market. While deciding which type of entrepreneur you want to be, consider your strengths and the field that you hold expertise in.

The goals of every entrepreneurship may differ, but eventually it is largely about profitability. This profitability, though mostly in context of financials, may even be about other causes like social challenges, cultural enrichment, growth etc.

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