Types of Entrepreneurs

Abstract

An entrepreneur is an independent agent who adopts a set of rules, consistent with a “search-and-satisfying” type of behavior, in order to reach goals such as the growth and profitability of his or her company. In doing this, curiosity and an instinct for exploration drive the entrepreneur – a combination in which intentional action and the faculty of making lucky and unexpected finds by accident sit side by side.

Somehow, entrepreneurs are the incarnation in the real world of the characters of a fairy story, “The Three Princes of Serendip,”¹ who “were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of.” They accept that everything is a matter of degree – that is, they “expect every ‘well-formed’ statement to be not true or false, but true more or less or false somewhat.” In other words, they believe that “A and not-A holds to any degree” (Kosko 1994). By the way, this logic, which is of Buddhist origin and has been defined as “multivalent” or “fuzzy,” in contrast to Aristotle’s “bivalent” logic, marks the most distant frontier between entrepreneurs and those scientists, mostly from the Western culture, who deem that fuzzy logic is wrong and pernicious, notwithstanding the number of innovations that originated from it.