ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND A STATE OF MIND

TO BE AN ENTREPRENEUR IS TO embrace a state of mind. That includes the startups that are discussed breathlessly in the media. However, entrepreneurship is about much more than just this clutch of (financial) unicorns capturing the imagination at any given moment.

- Tarun Khanna

Consider the etymology of “entrepreneur.” The term has been around since the 1700s, coming from the French entreprendre, to undertake a task. In the last few decades, it has been associated with Silicon Valley ventures, spreading variously to China, India, Israel, etc. A ‘Google Books’ search shows the use of ‘entrepreneur’ rises in the West over the past few decades, and in China, also rises sharply starting a few decades later, though the latter numbers should be taken with more than the usual pinch of salt (given translation difficulties).

Anyone with historical sensibility will know that entrepreneurship was hardy through the centuries. Joseph Schumpeter wrote his Theory of Economic Development in 1911 where he celebrates the entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs thrived during the time of the Mauryas, and in Medici Florence, and elsewhere. The last century of Chinese development is littered with entrepreneurial successes, transcending regimes and surviving turbulence, from the statesman philanthropist Zhang Jian and the Dasheng Textile Company in 1895, to Liu Hongsheng, the “King of Matches,” and the China Match Company in 1930, to Lu Guanqiu, the Zhejiang peasant who founded – incredibly, during the peak of the Cultural Revolution in 1970s – the now multi-billion dollar global automotive parts Wanxiang Group.