Week 2 Reading Reflection

In this chapter I learned lots of new information about the concept of entrepreneurship. But I think one of the biggest parts that stood out actually was on the first page of the text, when the author distinguished the difference between an entrepreneur and a small-business owner. Before this class I believed that these two terms could be used interchangeably, one of the same. But the author points out in this section of the text that there are differences between the two, differences that I hadn’t put much thought into before. For example one of the items discussed was the different perspective on the development of their firms. An entrepreneur maintains the objectives of innovation, profitability and growth. Small-businesses on the other hand usually aren’t innovative in their practice and some owners prefer a more stable and less aggressive approach to their business, wanting to maintain stability.

I believe that the most confusing aspect of this chapter was in the Schools -of-Thought Approaches to entrepreneurship. Separating these approaches based on macro and micro seemed to be a tad bit confusing because sometimes the lines seemed blurred between what was defined as an external locus of control versus an internal locus of control. For example in the Environmental School of Thought which is classified as a macro view it discusses the entrepreneurs’ lifestyle. In my opinion that sounds more like an internal locus of control in terms of how someone chooses to live their life, or the desires which someone has, yet being classified as macro and external is confusing.

Towards the end of the chapter the author defines a new term to me called a “gazelle”. This is an interesting concept and I enjoyed reading about and although the text did a great job defining the term and explaining the concept, it didn’t give many real life examples of companies that would fit in this terms category. What are some companies or businesses that are around present day and fit this mold at some point in its lifespan? Are they successful today? Are they still at the same pace? If so, how did they achieve this?

When talking about the costs of free trade in the text the author cites NAFTA (The North American Free Trade Agreement) as a source of job loss in the United States because of outsourcing. I’m curious as to what options the US really has in addressing this problem? The author discusses a movement of fair trade rather than free trade, but how would look in the real world? How would the US go about honoring their trade agreement with Canada and Mexico and at the same time try to edge towards this change in trade?

This chapter was pretty straightforward in terms of the content and had a lot of definitions and explaining theories and approaches to entrepreneurship, so there wasn’t a lot of information to potentially disagree upon with the author.