Figure 4.1. Defining the scope of entrepreneurship (source: Bruyat 1993)
affirmation (1988): ‘Entrepreneurship is the intentional creation of value through organization, by an individual contributor or a small group of partners’.
Based on these criteria, Figure 4.1 presents a definition of the field
of entrepreneurship.
Clarifying the notions of ‘individual’ and ‘value creation’
This representation comes up against two main difficulties: one related to the individual, the other to the creation of value.
First, in some cases, value creation does not originate from one individual, but from a team. When this team is led by an identified leader (without whom nothing would have been possible), then the entrepreneur is, without a doubt, the leader of the team. But should we include a business start-up initiated and managed by a small team (often just two or three) if no leader can be identified? We would ten to say yes. If we assume that nothing would have been possible if one of them had failed to participate, or that any defection could bring the disappearance, or at least a significant modification of the individual/valuecreation dialogic, then the entrepreneur is the team. The creation of
value by a team poses specific problems, and constitutes an interesting research path for the future.
Secondly, another difficulty appears with the notion of value creation. The concept of value is a key concept of economic science. What is value, how does it emerge? For some, like Condillac or the first Austrian marginalists (Menger, for instance), value is generated through exchanges at prices determined by the market. In this light,