Entrepreneurs feel more respected now than at any other time during the past 25 years, according to a 2007 report from Shell Livewire and the London School of Economics (LSE).
The Changing Face of UK Entrepreneurism, which compared the views of business owners from the 1980s and early 1990s to those who became entrepreneurs between the late 1990s and the present day, concluded that today’s business owners – or ‘new economy entrepreneurs’ – tend to see starting a business as a mainstream career choice, whereas the ‘enterprise culture entrepreneurs’ who preceded them saw starting a company as a maverick livelihood.
New-economy entrepreneurs are generally more aware of the effects their activities have on customers, employees, shareholders, the wider community and the environment
The report characterises the 1980s entrepreneur as focused wholly on the bottom line, seeing profit and growth as definitive barometers of satisfaction. Of today’s business owners, only half say that making money is their biggest motivation, with many citing the freedom to be creative as a major attraction.
New-economy entrepreneurs are generally more aware of the effects their activities have on customers, employees, shareholders, the wider community and the environment. This doesn’t mean company owners no longer care about revenues, however.
On the contrary, the rise of ethical consumerism means that a brand’s social and environmental credentials can affect sales more than ever (leading many big businesses to set up departments dedicated to ‘corporate social responsibility’). The phenomenal success of ‘ethical’ companies such as Innocent and The Body Shop attests to this.
Alan Sugar says the LSE report, embodies the new enterprise entrepreneur of the late 1980s and early 90s; Richard Branson is the poster boy of the socially conscientious entrepreneur.
