Entrepreneur

Last week I spoke about entrepreneurship being about education. And, it is a true statement. A large part of entrepreneurship is the education which facilitates an exchange of value. Aka selling stuff.

Admittedly, this is a newer conception of the word entrepreneur. The term "entrepreneur" was originally coined, around 1800, by French economist Jean-Bastiste Say.

JB Say originally gave the following definition, “The entrepreneur shifts economic resources out of an area of lower and into an area of higher productivity and greater yield.”

Nowadays the word entrepreneur has morphed into numerous meanings. Many of which I support. However, I feel it wise to always remember the original meaning of the word.

Entrepreneurship is the essence of economic activity. Indeed, it is the essence of life. Because life and business are critically dependent on the allocation of scarce resources.

I know that sounds pretty dry, but it is important. It is so common for people to keep adding servings to their plate. Meaning, we keep taking on more and more stuff, to do or to think about.

The trouble we run into is the fact that mental energy is a limited resource. And, if you understand the nature of humans, and resource allocation, you understand that deciding what to ignore, deciding what not to do, is usually the hard part.

Additionally, we need to know what our resources are. Meaning, we need to know our strengths. Click here to go to an old post which contains an excellent strengths test.

Back in the 19th Century, like most economists, JB Say was talking about resources. Today we live in the information age, where knowledge is one of the key resources. 

Today, our main resources reside between our two ears. These resources are: attention, knowledge, style, and strengths.

If we wish to allocate our resources, we had better know what they are!