Member Article

Is the small business owner dead? Is it long live the Entrepreneur?

It seems there is a change taking place within the British SME sector.

Until comparatively recently, Napoleon’s epithet that we were a ‘nation of shopkeepers’ reflected, to a reasonable extent, the make-up of our small business sector. Sure, we weren’t all retailers, but the sentiment behind the quote - that we had a host of small, thriving businesses that people had worked hard to get off the ground and which were providing a solid community service day after day - was something of which to be proud.

That, it seems, may no longer be the case. Instead, the term ‘small business owner’ may be going somewhat out of fashion. To be in vogue in 2014 small business Britain, it’s no longer enough to own the business, one has to be an entrepreneur.

After all, the Dragons in the Den don’t seek to invest their money in small business owners, they look for entrepreneurs; Lord Sugar doesn’t look to hire apprentices who have a ‘small business owner’ spirit about them, and newspapers and magazines talk of enterprise and entrepreneurialism even though, for many of us, enterprise will only ever be the space craft in Star Trek. It’s as if being a small business owner is no longer enough.

But is it more than just semantics? The dictionary defines an entrepreneur as “a person who sets up a business or businesses, taking on financial risks in the hope of profit”. But that implies insufficient difference between an entrepreneur and a small business owner to merit the term being used.

Let’s develop our own definition because there clearly is a difference between a small business owner and an entrepreneur; the latter creates a market where there may not previously have been one or, through sheer self-belief and great ideas, transforms a mature market into something new and dynamic.

The other hallmark of an entrepreneur is thick skin – they will pursue their ideas regardless of any negatives thrown at them by others, often with a personal financial investment that could cause major problems if the idea were to fail. They are visionaries who have the capacity to motivate others and bring together high performing teams to help achieve their goals and, in so doing, create that holiest of grails, the high growth business capable of rapid job creation.

But herein lies the point. Entrepreneurs are exciting because they take risks and they appear glamorous. There is also no doubt as well that technology has made it easier for people to adopt an entrepreneurial stance than it would have been twenty years ago.

But for every entrepreneur, Britain probably has four or five or more ordinary, hard working small business owners. The reality is we need both to achieve a balanced economy and, so, in the way we discuss and present our small business sector, we need to reflect the relative achievements and importance of both.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ingenious Britain .