A new perspective to understand entrepreneurship 77
For individuals, change concerns aspects of their personal and professional life, and the initial as well as the resulting situation (even though this is an arbitrary definition, as it is really about a continuum). The individual who abandons a top executive career within a large corporation to set up a business will experience a change in social status, and will find himself or herself in a totally different professional situation. Individuals in this case leave a situation in which they are assisted and supported by a whole organisation, to face a new context in which they will need to do numerous things on their own. Entrepreneurs must learn how to perform tasks they are not used to. Individuals who start up businesses in new sectors of activity are also confronted with significant change at a professional level, owing to their social status, new responsibilities, the work itself and the know-how they must master. Yet, there are cases when new value creation does not foster any change for the individual.
The second dimension, that of new value creation, can also vary in intensity. Innovation (product innovation or technological innovation) is a good example of new value creation. Innovation is a particular instance of value creation that fosters a great deal of interest from numerous actors in the field of entrepreneurship.We will come back to the subject of innovation in the final section of this chapter. In this individual/ value creation dialogic, rare are the cases when significant value is created without innovation. Yet, while innovation generally involves development and growth potential for the company that exploits it, it does not always generate significant value. To simplify, we can consider that an innovation, whatever its nature, creates (more or less) value
(Barreyre and Lentrein 1987). Technological and innovative business start-ups are good examples of new value creation.
There are also cases of value creation where the value created is not really new. It is the case, for instance, of existing activities, which are pursued under different legal and/or organisational forms, without inducing changes in the market or the supply. Additional value can be created through a new organisation or within an existing organisation. This value is more or less significant: there is little in common between the development of a new activity with strong potential and the creation of a seasonal activity for instance.
Lastly, new value creation is compatible with an individual approach (e.g. new venture creation by an individual) or a collective approach (e.g. creation of an activity or a company by an existing organisation).