ENTREPRENEURSHIP VS. INNOVATION

Source (Altered): https://www.flickr.com/photos/jnyemb/5200175187/

Last week on Wednesday, I attended our local chamber of commerce's annual meeting. Jim Clifton from Gallop was the keynote speaker. He talked about how he believes encouraging and developing entrepreneurs will be the key to economic health, rather than innovation. He said that locales who push and foster too much innovation are putting their eggs in the wrong basket. His argument has some merit, but as with everything, it seems, I think there needs to be a balance.

When you limit the definition of innovation to just creating new products, services, or widgets, the notion of favoring entrepreneurship is sound. But I think he contradicted himself when he talked about how people he knew developed businesses we all know today, like eBay. It's true that selling used things in a garage sale or via auction is nothing new, but using the Internet to create a monstrous database of auction and garage sale items for sale was. In other words, eBay innovated in how it did business.

I'm a writer and editor; this is nothing new and groundbreaking, but (I'm hoping at least) the way I do my writing and editing and run my business is. Otherwise, I'll just be another in a sea of competitors. So I think the lesson is that we do need entrepreneurs, we do need people who will take risks to create new companies with new jobs doing things that aren't new, but that those entrepreneurs, for their own and the greater community's long term health, need to innovate in how they do business in order to compete.

Happy "entrepreneuring" -- and innovating...!
-The Wordsy Woman