Entrepreneurs and Innovators: Distinct Roles in Business Growth

This essay examines the differences between entrepreneurs and innovators, clarifying their distinct roles in the business world. Entrepreneurs are described as individuals who develop new businesses, manage risks, and reap rewards, while innovators identify needs and opportunities within industries. The essay highlights that innovators focus on creating new ideas and improving existing products, whereas entrepreneurs concentrate on converting ideas into viable business opportunities, marketing products, and generating profit. It emphasizes that entrepreneurs possess characteristics such as hard work, leadership, and risk-taking, while innovators exhibit creativity and experimental thinking. The essay provides examples of successful entrepreneurs like Henry Ford, Sam Walton, and Ray Kroc, who were not innovators themselves but effectively transformed innovative ideas into thriving businesses. The conclusion reinforces that innovators introduce novel concepts, and entrepreneurs transform these concepts into business opportunities, highlighting their interdependent roles in the market.

Entrepreneurs Are Not
Innovators

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
Entrepreneurs are not innovators............................................................................................3
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................6

INTRODUCTION
An entrepreneur is a person who develops a new business, bearing all the risks as well as
enjoy rewards that comes in way of establishing company in marketplace. Whereas an innovator
is an individual who determines need in an industry, culture, market segment and identifies
opportunities in them. Entrepreneurs have to evaluate all the possibilities of failure and success
in a business while innovators are sensitive to any uncertainties as well avoid taking any risks
(Krell, 2017). In this report, it has been examined, discussed and explained that how
entrepreneurs are different from innovators.
MAIN BODY
Entrepreneurs are not innovators
Innovation and entrepreneurship are two closely associated words which are utilized in
business world. Some people think that both are same but using them in place of each other
would be a big mistake as these positions go around the same idea but they are different from
each other and it is very important to understand difference between them.
Innovators are those individuals who want to develop new ideas and new ways of doing
things. Innovation is a vital factor in all sectors of businesses as it adds value and modifies
existing products or services while also creating new products or services (Mvulirwenande and
Wehn 2020 ). Innovation is required as there are many changes occur in the market regularly
such as technological changes, new knowledge, new trends and sometimes economic changes.
Whereas entrepreneurs are those individuals who take an idea and convert that into
business possibilities. The main purpose of entrepreneurs is to fit products or services in market
and sell those to customer in order to earn profit. Entrepreneurs establish companies according to
the existing demands of customers and are responsible for debt and rewards they face while
operating business.
Innovators have the capability of inventing new products or services and they could also
modify already existing products that have been invented earlier by contributing their part in
invention (Miao, 2020). As for an example, the creation of laptops which is a portable computer
device that could be taken from place to place. Even though computers had already been existed
in the market but the innovation of laptops brought new technological changes in the market.
While in case of entrepreneurs, these individuals have the ability to market a particular product

or service in front of investors and customer that help them in rising their start-ups or companies.
As for an example, the idea of portable computer was given by innovator but its marketing and
customer network was built by an entrepreneur as they have required knowledge about what
market could be reached in respect to laptops (Farny and Binder, 2021).
There are some characteristics which an entrepreneur must posses which is much more
different from an innovator. The main features that entrepreneurs have in themselves includes
hard-working, passionate, flexible, risk-taker, leadership, commitment, planning abilities,
managerial and future-oriented. Whereas innovators have creative, experimental thinking
abilities as well as they are highly productive and push their limits in order to create new
product or service in the market (Haldar, 2019).
Entrepreneurs are different from innovators in one more aspect as they implements all
their efforts in entrepreneurial ventures in order to make it successful whereas an innovator lose
interest after an idea passes the market introduction stage and they focus on further development
of new ideas or fresh products. The main purpose of entrepreneurs is to make something out of
innovation while the main aim of innovators is to create something out of a unique thought.
Innovators are more open to innovation and posses the ability to withdraw meaningful
learnings from their experiments and enforced them back into the tasks to accommodate idea as
well as make it develop in meaningful way. Whereas entrepreneurs are prone to market
development as they clearly determines the category of products or services which are beneficial
for consumers and could satisfy their needs (Youssef, Boubaker and Omri, 2018). They pay
attention in studying market and demands of customers in order to accomplish sustainable
competitive advantage. They invest their time and resources in specific initiative as they are
confident in developing something good in the market while innovators invest their time and
resources in creating new which is not existing in marketplace.
Entrepreneurs like Henry Ford, Sam Walton and Ray Kroc did not invented their
respective businesses but are known personalities today. For example, Henry Ford was the
founder of Ford Motor Company and an American industrialist, he established the car company
but he did not himself invented cars. He died in the year 1947 and his net worth was
approximately $200 billion (Bruni, Bonesso and Gerli, 2019). Another entrepreneur personality
Sam Walton was the founder of retail company Walmart but did not gave the idea of retail stores.
He died in 1992 and his net worth was around $100 billion (Pérez, Hands and McKeever, 2017).

One more entrepreneur personality who was not the innovator of that particular product but
converted that thought into business and he was Ray Kroc. He bought McDonald's which is a
fast food company in 1961 but he did not invented burgers or fast foods. He was an American
businessman and died in the year 1984, his net worth was almost half a billion dollars (Wijaya,
Rudiarto and Kurniawati, 2021).
From the above examples it could be seen that entrepreneurs are not innovators and they
just implemented ideas or thoughts of innovators into a well established enterprises for
enhancing their productivity and growth. They invested their energy in setting up their respective
companies and gained popularity and success from them.
CONCLUSION
From the above discussion it could be concluded that innovators are the people who
present something innovative in terms of process, model, product, service or idea within
marketplace while entrepreneurs are people who change outstanding ideas into business
opportunities. It has also been observed that entrepreneurs have to remain social and innovators
usually remain isolate. Both innovator and entrepreneur plays important role in all characteristics
of business as they both are interdependent as well as they could not survive in the market
without each other.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Bruni, E., Bonesso, S. and Gerli, F., 2019. Coping with different types of innovation: What do
metaphors reveal about how entrepreneurs describe the innovation process?. Creativity
and Innovation Management. 28(2). pp.175-190.
Farny, S. and Binder, J., 2021. Sustainable entrepreneurship. In World Encyclopedia of
Entrepreneurship. Edward Elgar Publishing.
Haldar, S., 2019. Green entrepreneurship in theory and practice: insights from
India. International Journal of Green Economics. 13(2). pp.99-119.
Krell, E., 2017. Deeper thoughts (and fundamental questions) about innovation and
disruption. Baylor Business Review. 36(1). pp.4-7.
Miao, Z., 2020. The Influence Factors of Psychological Understanding and Behavior Choice for
Legal Industry Entrepreneurs Based on Artificial Intelligence Technology. Frontiers in
psychology. 11. p.1615.
Mvulirwenande, S. and Wehn, U., 2020. Analysing frugal innovation incubation programmes: a
case study from the water sector. Prometheus. 36(2). pp.95-115.
Pérez, D., Hands, D. and McKeever, E., 2017. Design for Society: Analysis of the adoption of
Design practices by Early-Stage Social Entrepreneurs. The Design Journal. 20(sup1).
pp.S3020-S3034.
Wijaya, H. B., Rudiarto, I. and Kurniawati, H., 2021. Migrant entrepreneurs in industry cluster
formation and innovation: the case of Semarang, Central Java, Indonesia. In Immigrant
Entrepreneurship in Cities (pp. 153-173). Springer, Cham.
Youssef, A. B., Boubaker, S. and Omri, A., 2018. Entrepreneurship and sustainability: The need
for innovative and institutional solutions. Technological Forecasting and Social
Change. 129. pp.232-241.