Types and roles of productive entrepreneurship: A conceptual study

This chapter aims to contribute to a structured overview of relevant dimensions and possible typologies, and to a selection of a smaller number of major entrepreneurship types that make specific economic and social contributions. It examines the entrepreneurial roles that are being fulfilled by these main types. Apart from two general roles that are played by (almost) all entrepreneurs, that is, risk bearing, and judgmental decision-making about the allocation of scarce resources, the chapter discusses five roles that have a special relevance for specific types of entrepreneurship. The five roles are: exploration and creation; dynamic exploitation; static exploitation; enabling role of (mostly solo) entrepreneurs on behalf of client firms hiring them; and self-employment as work opportunity for outsiders in the labor market. The chapter concerns the causal chains from these entrepreneurial roles to their final social and economic contributions, including the intermediate effects and linkages that are involved.

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