Entrepreneurship

I have defined 'entrepreneurship very narrowly for this study, for the following reasons. You may be a very enterprising, self-motivated and successful person and not be an entrepreneur under this definition. That is fine, and not a criticism of you! But I need to have an objective and consistent definition throughout the study, as otherwise the work degenerates into a miasma of personal opinion.

All the students on the MBE course can be expected to be ‘entrepreneurial’ in some sense. I therefore defined ‘entrepreneurial’ activities very narrowly as any activity where the individual was a founding member of a new enterprise (whether for-profit or non-profit) that was set up outside their current institution (whether school, university or employment), set up without substantial prior commitment of resources by others (such as grants or investment), and with substantial investment of time or other resources on the founders’ part. Examples of ‘entrepreneurial’ activities include setting up a new company, setting up a new charity, launching an independent publication. Examples of non-entrepreneurial activity (under this restrictive definition) are heading the formation of a new group within a company, leading a university organization, or organizing a student expedition. By adopting this restricted definition I avoided the requirement to make value judgements about the level of risk, initiative and personal investment needed in a wide range of disparate activities from students from many countries.

This definition does not take into account whether the entrepreneurial activity was a success. The point of this study was to analyse founding teams, and not the many factors (most of which are out of the control of the founding team) that can affect outcome.