Organic or Deliberate

Abstract

The impetus for understanding where novelty comes from in the environment is clear. Entrepreneurs create new jobs for themselves, new offerings for customers and broader economic and social benefits for society at large. The difficult part comes in understanding the source of this novelty well enough that it might be instrumented, managed and encouraged. The companion essay to this one (Applying the Ecosystem Metaphor to Entrepreneurship: Uses and Abuses) adopts a perspective that ecosystems create entrepreneurs, and thus effort need be applied to creating ecosystems. I reverse the causality. Arguing for the agency of creative entrepreneurs, I suggest a view of environments as outcomes, and entrepreneurs as inputs. Building on this alternative perspective, it makes sense to direct effort toward creating entrepreneurs such that they might go on to create that broader slate of artifacts we so desire in the environment, including environments themselves.