Business Thinking!!!

Small Business Owners versus Entrepreneurs

 

MANILA, Philippines — Given a primary role in driving economic growth, entrepreneurs often share poster child status for success with showbiz celebrities and powerful politicians. These economic icons, however, are not singularly emblematic of a professional specie that owns well over 90 percent of the world’s businesses. On the other hand, saying that an entrepreneur is one who works for himself is like saying all birds are the same. By using a handle we can get a grip on, we lose the variety in flavor.

Akin to the Genome Project, numerous researches have tried to splice the profile of the highly successful entrepreneur by looking at various internal and external factors in order to arrive at a workable framework that can ideally pave the way for replication. After all, if you can replicate the titans that drive the economy, wouldn’t it be good for the whole society eventually?
Boosting the small business owner to become a highly successful entrepreneur, however, is not as easy as turbo-charging growth in a petri dish with chemical juice. Even as both shark and catfish swim but in profiles are worlds apart, the motivation and mindset between entrepreneurs and small business owners are just as distinct. Luanne Teoh, senior correspondent of BizTechDay, used her vast international work experience of working with thousands of entrepreneurs to isolate these interesting differences in her BizTechDay article, “Difference between an Entrepreneur and a Small Business Owner.”


Distinctions In Goals And Viewpoints


In terms of primary motivation, an entrepreneur is one who wants to make a change and achieve impact by creating a distinct value. To achieve this, the entrepreneur is willing to pay for top and right talent. The entrepreneur, in addition, takes a collaborative approach of using employees, customers and other investors’ experience and resources in order to define that value in the market place. Although the entrepreneur is egged on by the goal of financial freedom, he or she is not afraid of failure. Being full of ideas and excited by change, the entrepreneur merely moves on with a new innovation, failure or not, and ends up getting involved in different businesses.
A small business owner, on the other hand, primarily gets into business to make a living, either by choice or not. As such, the foremost intent is to make a regular income by being the day-to-day manager through self-employment. Assets are measured in terms of inventory, properties and other hard assets with its known economic value. The key business strategies are to create sales and to keep costs low with employee compensation at market rate or below in order to generate long-term stability. This stability ensures that the small business owner will remain the principal company owner and keep the business for the long haul through essentially repetitive tasks.
The differences do not make small business owners inferior. After all, ninety-two percent of the economy is made up of small businesses. At different levels and scale, both types of businessmen create goods and value, generate jobs and provide the lifeblood that keeps governments working. The entrepreneur opens the way to new innovations and to new worlds, while the small business owner works hard to sustain whatever he or she built.

Evangeline, a.k.a. Girlie, Navarro is a serial entrepreneur and investor, a finance teacher, and a student at heart on how money and resources affect people. She can be contacted at evangeline.navarro@gmail.com.

source: http://mb.com.ph/articles/358415/small-business-owners-versus-entrepreneurs

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My Opinion:

We can equate entrepreneurs as big business or companies, while merchant or traders as the small business. The difference between the two of them are ocean apart. While an entrepreneur works for big business that create value in the market, the small businessman is in the market to earn a living. The entrepreneur in order to achieve a sales and succeed in its chosen field will invest in human resources, customer services, advertisements, research, new technologies and all other innovative tools. While a small businessman will try to increase sales and profits by cutting overhead cost and other business related expenses. But in the world of business, each one needs each other to survived. Its just the way of doing it that they differ.