Types of Entrepreneurship

Some of the types of entrepreneurship are as follows:

1. Intrapreneurship 
2. Technopreneurship 
3. Cultural entrepreneurship 
4. International entrepreneurship 
5. Netpreneurship 
6. Ecopreneurship 
7. Social Entrepreneurship

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Types of Entrepreneurship

Some of the types of entrepreneurship are as follows:

1. Netpreneurship:

Entrepreneurship through the Internet as a medium is netpreneurship. When some entrepreneurs use the Internet as a channel of reaching their customers, launching products through web portals; they are called netpreneurship. The Internet has taken businesses in its stride and there are many successful examples of the Indian diaspora including Flipkart, Snapdeal, Zomato, Zivame, Jaypore, Justdial and so on.

These entrepreneurs have redefined supply chain management and have reached a step closer to the end consumer. Their virtual existence, less staff and elimination of middlemen has given them an edge as they have been passing benefits to consumers in the form of Tow priced’ goods or good discount offers.

2. Ecopreneurship:

Environmental issues have attracted global attention during the past few decades. Everyone talks about sustainable growth so that coming generations also take benefit of natural resources that previous generations and we have nurtured. Applying entrepreneurial principles to resolve environmental concerns is popularly termed as “Ecopreneurship”.

Initially it was referred to as “environmental entrepreneurship” which has over the years transformed into Ecopreneurship. According to Schuyler (1998), What is an Ecopreneur? An Entrepreneur’s business efforts are not only driven by profit, but also by a convert for the environment as an ecopreneur.

Awareness about ill effects of rapid industrialisation and consequent climate change has made people conscious about judicial exploitation of natural resources across the globe. Energy efficiency stars on electrical appliances, move towards LED and CFL lights, growing popularity of organic eatables and use of jute bags are examples of environmentally friendly business ideas that have already been implemented in India.

Hence, ecopreneurs are the entrepreneurs who base their businesses on principles of sustainable development. They are the new age of environment-conscious change agents who are rewriting the way business should be steered and are launching eco-friendly innovations for betterment of the human race along with financial gains.

Drivers of Ecopreneurship:

1. To promote economic growth through environmental awareness. There is a need to control economic activities otherwise to safeguard economic development of generations to come.
2. New and innovative eco-friendly technologies have a greater scope of sustainability in the long-run than gap-filling arrangements.
3. Judicial use of finite natural resources is a prerequisite to fight climate change.
4. Global population growth is an important driving force behind entrepreneurial businesses.

3. Intrapreneurship

An Intrapreneur is an ambitious innovator who acts like an entrepreneur while being employed. Intrapreneurs normally urge to form their thoughts into a workable item by the organizations they work for. Like an entrepreneur, an intrapreneur is confident, imaginative, and ready to think as if there is no box.

The term ‘intrapreneur’ was first used by Gifford Pinchot III and Elizabeth Pinchot in 1978. Pinchot (1984) further defined intrapreneurs as “dreamers who do. Those who take hands-on responsibility for creating innovation of any kind, within a business.” In 1992 Organisations support intrapreneurs with money and access to corporate resources, while intrapreneurs innovate for companies.

The intrapreneur focuses on innovation and creativity, and transforms an idea into a commercial venture, while operating within the corporate environment. Thus, intrapreneurs are intra (within organization) entrepreneurs who nurture their creativity while following goals of the organization. Intrapreneurship can be used as a tool of motivation through job design, either formally or informally.

For instance, Google is known to be an intrapreneur friendly employer and encourages innovations by employees. The organizations need to give time to their employees for them to explore creative domains and work towards improving product qualities or develop better processes. Most of the technology giants are focusing on ‘innovation’ and ‘creativity’ to strive through challenging times.

The organizations must recognize and acknowledge the efforts of intrapreneurs to motivate them and foster healthy competition. It is a great challenge to recognize their effort because companies need to segregate their efforts from those of the team. These individuals initiate the ideas however the teams implement the same.

The managers must handle intrapreneurs judicially and must also recognize the efforts of executive teams for transforming thoughts to products. In this age of automation, more and more companies are retraining employees and urging them to learn new technologies.

The amalgam of humans with technology leads to a synergy effect that in turn multiplies productivity and divides effort. For instance, the idea of e-choupal, an ITC division germinated when Sivakumar, a manager in the ITC Group’s agribusiness unit, approached ITC’s chairman, with a request of Rs. 50 lakh to test an idea. He wanted to procure farm produce from soya farmers in Madhya Pradesh, thereby eliminating middlemen. Today, e-Choupal, reaches out to over 4 million farmers growing a range of crops in over 40,000 villages across 10 states.

4. Cultural Entrepreneurship:

According to Genevieve Tremblay’s blog “Cultural Entrepreneurs”

“Cultural Entrepreneurs are cultural change agents and resourceful visionaries who organize cultural, financial, social and human capital, to generate revenue from a cultural activity. Their innovative solutions result in economically sustainable cultural enterprises that enhance livelihoods and create cultural value and wealth for both creative producers and consumers of cultural services and products.”

Hence, cultural entrepreneurship implies creation of any product or service that primarily targets our tastes in fashion, accessories, movies, music, stories, games or food. This would include magazines, movie making, restaurants, cartoon characters, kids TV shows etc.

Few cultural sectors have witnessed sustainable growth over the past many decades like the very celebrated Bollywood films and music. Indians are also known to be food-lovers and different cuisines have paved their way to Indian homes by offering gastronomical delights and so have been fashion trends. However, few other sectors like publishing, animation, comics or gaming have seen a slower growth.

With the growth of nuclear families and the urge to meet recreational demands of customers, big brands of developed countries are making huge profits from the Indian customer base. For instance, “Chota Bheem” is a popular comic character in India and has its own market share in terms of cartoon serials, movies, toys, bags, books etc. However, we have not been able to sustain earlier characters like ‘Chacha Choudhary.’

On the other hand, most Japanese cartoons are household names in India. So the opportunity exists and we need to explore. In fact, cultural entrepreneurs need to visualize the opportunities in a culturally rich economy like India. For example, we have seen Bollywood movies launching video games in the recent past. It already provides opportunities to different businesses around dance and music.

It is important for the governments to recognize the significance of cultural entrepreneurship and develop desired infrastructure. Khaadi and Village Industries have seen various entrepreneurs generating huge customer bases in India and abroad with government backing in terms of seed capital, technical help, marketing help etc.

Cultural entrepreneurs identify the scope of rich cultural heritage of a country and nurture it for financial gains and overall development. They are risk-bearing individuals who foray into the field of culture, they produce new products and services or alternatively they penetrate new markets with their existing line of less known products. There are various successful examples like Haldiram’s in the food business, Om Books in publishing and Joy Alukaas in Indian traditional jewellery.

5. International Entrepreneurship:

The entrepreneurs who run their businesses beyond geographical boundaries of one country are tiled as international entrepreneurs. They transcend the border and expand their ventures into more than one country. As they face more than one economy, they have to deal with different challenging issues. Crossing the borders is becoming increasingly important and lucrative as consumers also look at the global marketplace. Different countries have varied untapped potentials and various entrepreneurs explore the same.

It is often seen as a natural progression with increase in size and scale of business. It also includes startups that focus on international markets through their very inception. Moreover, access to wider markets allows better understanding of customer needs, helps entrepreneurs in developing and marketing different products.

Catering to different markets improves their hedging potential and allows some products to be test marketed in certain segments before worldwide launch. There have been various successful examples of international entrepreneurs including Jeff Bezos of Amazon to N R Naranyanmurthy of Infosys.

These entrepreneurs are also faced with usual issues of risk of failure, relentless pressure, long working hours and lack of resources. Some additions to the existing list are a massive amount of travel, the need to learn/manage a foreign language, ability to adapt to new business cultures and impact of global concerns. As the canvas goes wider so are the issues.

Importance of International Entrepreneurship:

i. Access to a larger customer base – It allows entrepreneurs to sell their ideas across national borders.

ii. Extending product lifecycle – The entrepreneurs spread their and their products reaching maturity stage in domestic markets to relatively under-developed markets.

iii. Better profitability – Spreading of costs and increased sales can help in generating better profits in the long-run.

iv. Economies of large scale – Producing higher volumes of products leads to optimum utilization of existing capacities and brings down per unit costs.

v. Brand building – The establishment of a company as a trustworthy brand reaps great benefits in the future.

vi. Inspiration for startups – International entrepreneurs are role models of various budding entrepreneurs.

vii. Increased competitiveness – Companies tend to produce better products and constantly urge to improve to sustain international competition.

viii. Global standards – Meeting satisfaction levels of international customers’ helps in maintaining world-class quality standards.

ix. Harnessing cheaper resources – Access to international markets also paves way for the companies to hire cost- effective labor and material.

x. Growth of domestic brands – Mother’s pickles, MDH spices and Haldiram’s range of products are examples of how Indian brands have gained global recognition through persistence efforts.

Challenges for International Entrepreneurship:

i. Exposure to Varying Ecosystems:

An entrepreneur needs to understand different economies at the same time and address their individual and collective issues simultaneously. Domestic business limits entrepreneurial activities to be designed according to the needs of one economy. There may be differences in culture, political processes or legal legislations of different countries.

ii. Level of Economic Development:

An entrepreneur has to classify various countries into under-developed, developing and developed economies and customize products and services accordingly. There are significant differences in product demand, customer awareness, and openness towards new products depending upon economic development. For example, using digital means of payment has picked up pace after demonetization in India but the level of online transactions in developed economies is already higher.

iii. Cultural Diversity:

The entrepreneur must handle diversity amongst the workforce and customers sensitively. There might be huge cultural differences between country of origin and country of consumption.

iv. Level of Technological Advancements:

Developed economies have far better and updated technologies than their developing counterparts. It is necessary to understand customer expectations and their current level of satisfaction to act as gap filler. Mere reproduction of existing products would not yield success.

v. Regulatory Environment and Political Stability:

These two factors play an important role in defining the “ease of doing business” in any country. For instance, the Indian government has been working really hard to scale up in ‘ease of doing business’ rankings. Political instability and outdated laws are regressive in nature and do not contribute towards growth of entrepreneurs.

6.Technopreneurship:

Technopreneurship refers to entrepreneurship through technical innovation. Technology, innovation and entrepreneurship are all buzz words in today’s scenario. Technopreneurship refers to the amalgam of these terms and gradual development of an interdisciplinary concept. The term “technopreneurs” refers to technology oriented entrepreneurs, who display entrepreneurial character by ICT and multimedia SMEs, start-ups ICT and multimedia companies.

Techno-entrepreneurship can be defined as the entrepreneurship in the technology area and the person who undertakes techno-entrepreneurship is termed as Techno-Entrepreneur. Techno-Entrepreneur is also termed as Techno-preneur and hence Techno-entrepreneurship can be termed as Techno-preneurship. These entrepreneurs develop their business proposals on the basis of technical innovations and advancement.

They themselves develop some of them while others may customize technologies used in developed countries according to the needs of developing economies. With the growth of next-gen entrepreneurs, young motivated and highly qualified individuals plan their path by banking upon technology, and carve out of the traditional setup of family businesses. Their distinctive feature is ‘technological expertise’. Even the government of India has been very supportive of such technopreneurs over past few decades.

The National Science & Technology Entrepreneurship Development Board (NSTEDB), established in 1982 by the Government of India is an institutional mechanism to help promote knowledge driven and technology intensive enterprises.

Technology Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship Information Service (TIMEIS), is a joint project of National Science and Entrepreneurship Development Board (NSTEDB), Department of Science & Technology, GOI and FICCI is now one of the credible ladder towards the enhancement of India’s entrepreneurial economy.

The project has taken initiatives to provide guidance and assistance to the entrepreneurs especially the techno-preneurs to find technologies, projects, funding options and information about policy environment, incentive schemes and industrial infrastructure available in the country covering both the central and state government and have become proficient at tapping the local talent pool.

TIME IS facilitates entrepreneurs with “Online Interactive Tools and Templates” for developing ‘Project Profile’, ‘Feasibility Reports’, calculating ‘Financial and Profitability Ratios’ and estimating the ‘Market Potential’.

7. Social Entrepreneurship:

Entrepreneurship in itself is a creative process of innovating new products, fulfilling customer expectations and filling gaps. When these entrepreneurs take up social challenges and proceed to resolve social issues through their innovative ideas, they are addressed as social entrepreneurs.

What is a Social Entrepreneur?

Social entrepreneurs drive social innovation and transformation in various fields including education, health, environment and enterprise development. They pursue poverty alleviation goals with entrepreneurial zeal, business methods and the courage to innovate and overcome traditional practices. A social entrepreneur, similar to a business entrepreneur, builds strong and sustainable organisations, which are either set up as not-for-profits or companies.

Social Responsibility in Entrepreneurship:

Entrepreneurship and the creation of businesses take place in both-profit settings, i.e., for commercial gains as well as in non profit settings, i.e., for social reasons. Whatever may be the reason for running an enterprise, it should have a good sense of responsibility to the immediate society in which it conducts its business. A number of companies in India and the world over have displayed immense social responsibility. Many enterprises support social programs and take up various social causes in their geographical area, or promote programs which address social causes at a larger level.

An outstanding example as far as our country is concerned, is the contribution by the TATA Group to the society.

Bokaro is called “Steel City” because of the commitment of the group (which operates a steel plant in the city) to the people of the city and to the city’s immediate surroundings. The steel plant provides housing to thousands of workers of the plant, and takes care of the families of these workers in terms of providing them schooling, welfare measures etc. By this process, the people of a remote location enjoy a stable and good lifestyle.

There are also many other large companies which have taken cognizance of their social responsibility, and have contributed to society. Social responsibility is not merely giving a donation for a social cause. It starts from taking care of the people who work for the enterprise and ensuring their welfare, ensuring that the components of the immediate ecosystem, be it suppliers, vendors, customers and environment are all handled carefully and responsibly.

Social responsibility also indicates taking steps to ensure the long-term sustainability of the enterprise and a commitment to the people residing in the immediate vicinity of the enterprise.

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