We recently had a committee meeting for the development of the Center for Entrepreneurship and Emerging Ventures that will be created in Wilmington, NC. The committee is comprised of about 30 of the most prominent business people in Wilmington, and what we do on the committee is essentially lay the foundation and the planning for what this center will do. Included in this planning is to come up with a name for the center, besides CEEV (I personally hate coming up with names for things).
During our conversation on potential names, someone brought up an interesting thought on whether we should have “entrepreneurship” as part of the name for the center. As one might imagine, it got more than a skeptical response (a bit ironic, if you ask me, considering we’re all entrepreneurs on the committee and are supposed to be risk takers and adaptable). Never the less, while I think entrepreneurship is a necessary word for the development of this center, I think he had a great point beyond that.
I think entrepreneurship is kind of the “web 2.0″ term for the business world. It’s that word that everyone knows, but not everyone necessarily understands. It’s like saying “I build businesses”. That leaves a big question as to just what that exactly means or entails… which makes it the perfect “web 2.0″ equivalent.
Entrepreneurship means something to those that know about it, and nothing to those that don’t. For example, if you are only involved in one component of building a business, like say marketing or accounting, that’s probably all “building a business” means to you. That’s why I say sell yourself as business development, not entrepreneurship. At the very least, business development gives you a title to work from at cocktail parties.
With business development your job not only sounds as important as it is, but it explains itself. Remember, you’re probably addressing a group of individuals who, if they got their business degree, are used to intuitive phrases like “diminishing returns” or “cost benefit analysis”. Saying “entrepreneurship” is like throwing “amortization” out there and expecting people to not have to think.
More than just the title, however, business development says you play nice. It means you’re capable of developing alternative revenue streams for a company, and growing their business in new ways that ultimately derives more profit. And while I wouldn’t say this about all job titles, with the kind of person biz dev requires, usually if you can do it for someone else, you can do it for yourself. So you’ll have built in credibility if you do ever decide to cross over into the realm of “entrepreneur”.
So, I’ve decided that I am going to simplify the whole process and say an entrepreneur is someone who has started their own company, and the rest are just business developers. I’ve done both, but for now, I think I’ll wear the biz dev tag. It just clicks faster, which means I get to spend less time explaining what I do to people and more time explaining why they should care.
Note: I realize that the great irony of this is my actual title says neither. But you get about the same reaction with V.P. of Technology. Too broad.
Note 2:I changed the title from the original as, I’ll admit, my original title was not great.