My\u00a0last post<\/a> triggered some interesting debates in the blogosphere about whether entrepreneurs were a product of nature or could be nurtured. It\u2019s not black or white. People are a product of their upbringing and education. Average humans can achieve extraordinary feats when they really try. I\u2019ll concede that, like some great athletes, some great entrepreneurs may have something different about them that gives them a special advantage (this is a topic that I am presently researching). But not every entrepreneur needs to reap the same fortune as Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg to qualify as a success. You can build a good lifestyle business that pays the bills, or that does good for the world, and be considered a successful entrepreneur. (And you\u2019ll probably be happier and gain more respect than most billionaires do.) Entrepreneurship isn\u2019t all about the IPO.<\/p>\n I hold steadfast to my belief \u2014 based on my experience in building two great technology companies and in mentoring around 200 entrepreneurs over some years and on what I\u2019ve learned from my academic research into the\u00a0background There was one criticism of my last post that caused me to do serious introspection.\u00a0 The question: was Bill Gates\u2019s dad an entrepreneur? I cited Gates Jr. as an example of an entrepreneur who didn\u2019t come from an entrepreneurial family. A number of readers, includingJason Calacanis<\/a>, pointed, out that Gates Sr. was a partner in a\u00a0law firm I\u2019ve debated and\u00a0written When I told this to some of my friends, I heard loud protests. Murali Bashyam, who started animmigration-law practice milarly, Sue Drakeford, who was Miss Nebraska 2001, had started a\u00a0production company After agonizing over this for weeks, I went to my friends at the Kauffman Foundation, and they referred me to their book titled \u201cGood Capitalism, Bad Capitalism Under the Kauffman definition, Sue would qualify as an \u201cinnovative entrepreneur\u201d, because she is developing new services and pioneering new methods. In contrast, Murali would be a \u201creplicative entrepreneur\u201d, because he delivers a standardized service in a field that charges primarily by the hour for its time. Murali could well end up running a huge law firm and be worth many millions, but that doesn\u2019t make him particularly innovative in his business model.<\/p>\n So Bill Gates Sr. was a \u201creplicative entrepreneur\u201d, and Gates Jr. was an \u201cinnovative entrepreneur\u201d \u2014 whom Silicon Valley calls an \u201centrepreneur\u201d. TechCrunch founder, Mike Arrington, who used to be a lawyer for Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, would qualify as an \u201cinnovative entrepreneur\u201d, because he created a new product (a blogging site) and was a pioneer in the new-media world.<\/p>\n n bring innovation to \u201creplicat\u201d fields as Arrington did. Take the example of\u00a0SunRun Another great example I\u2019ve seen of an entrepreneur who has innovated in a replicative industry is\u00a0Nand Kishore Chaudhary What\u2019s the moral of the story? Don\u2019t listen to the naysayers who are simply defending their informed views and biases by telling you that it\u2019s nature or some special DNA that makes entrepreneurs or leads to entrepreneurial success. Don\u2019t even be discouraged if you\u2019re in a mundane, replicative industry. You can learn the skills needed to become a successful entrepreneur, and you can innovat<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As I always read articles\u00a0written by Vivek this article is simply great. Where he explains\u00a0difference between Innovative\u00a0Entrepreneurs and Replicated\u00a0Entrepreneurs\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0As I…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":650,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business-related","category-personal","wpcat-7-id","wpcat-9-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakamsani.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakamsani.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakamsani.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakamsani.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakamsani.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lakamsani.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":679,"href":"https:\/\/lakamsani.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238\/revisions\/679"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakamsani.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakamsani.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakamsani.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakamsani.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/i.ixnp.com\/images\/v6.23\/t.gif\")
<\/a> and\u00a0motivations<\/a> of entrepreneurs \u2014 that entrepreneurs\u00a0can be made<\/a>. People born into entrepreneurial families may have the advantage of knowing the ups and downs of business, and, all else being equal, people from entrepreneurial families are certainly more likely to become entrepreneurs than others are. But the skills required to build, manage, and grow a business can be learned, and this education can level the playing field. VCs who judge entrepreneurs based on age, sex, ethnicity, or family background are doing their limited partners, and society, a great disservice.<\/p>\n<\/a>, and so an entrepreneur, arguing that my citation was therefore faulty.<\/p>\n<\/a> about this issue before. The broader question is whether anyone who starts a business, whether it is a law practice, a computer consulting firm, or a dry-cleaning store, is an entrepreneur. Management guru Peter Drucker would have answered with a definitive No. He wrote, \u201cNot every new small business is entrepreneurial or represents entrepreneurship\u2026 entrepreneurs innovate. Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship.\u201d Drucker didn\u2019t mince words.<\/p>\n<\/a>, insisted he was as much an entrepreneur as Bill Gates and his dad. Murali threatened, \u201cif you decide that I\u2019m not an entrepreneur, I might decide that the daily stress of growing and running a business, financial risks involved, and all the other headaches that come with creating something out of nothing is just not worth it. Maybe I\u2019ll close up and go work for someone, where I can earn a steady and high salary and go home at 5 pm\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/a> to host its own pageants and teach other African American women like her to gain the confidence and skills to compete in the real world. She wanted to provide a wholesome alternative to what she called the \u201ccold-blooded cutthroat world of modeling and beauty pageants\u201d.\u00a0 But Sue was working full-time at a bank and ran this business on the side. Was she an entrepreneur?\u00a0 Sue insisted she was.<\/p>\n<\/a>\u201d. Carl Schramm and Bob Litan wrote that all who take the risk are entrepreneurs, but that there are two types of entrepreneurs: \u201cReplicative entrepreneurs\u201d, who constitute the vast majority of small businesses (such as restaurants and dry cleaners), and \u201cinnovative entrepreneurs\u201d \u2014 the rare few who bring new products\/services to market or who pioneer new production methods (such as Walmart, eBay, and Dell).<\/p>\n<\/a>. The company installs solar cells \u2014 which is as mundane or \u201creplicative\u201d a business as you can get. But its CEO,\u00a0Edward Fenster<\/a>, developed a new business model under which his company installs solar panels on a customer\u2019s house for little to no upfront cost and only charges for the power that customers use.\u00a0 SunRun also insures, maintains, repairs, and monitors the system, and provides a money-back guarantee on the system\u2019s energy production. This has made solar power available to the masses at an affordable cost and the company has become largest residential solar company in the country, operating in five states, and growing at more than 400% per year.<\/p>\n<\/a>. He brought automation, supply-chain management, and professional business practices to the mundane process of carpet weaving and distribution in the desert state of Rajasthan, India.\u00a0 By implementing modern production practices and ERP technology, he was able to grow a small business,Jaipur Rugs<\/a>, that he\u2019d run from his home into a world-class production and distribution company, which employed 40,000 workers and generated $21 million in revenue in 2008. This is in a land where PCs were, until recently, as scarce as rainwater.<\/p>\n