Entrepreneurs vs Small Business Owners

I tweeted a while back making the point that there is a fundamental difference between entrepreneurs and small business owners and consequently they require different types of support from both the private and public sector.  Unsurprisingly, someone asked what the difference was and this is my belated albeit short response.

As I see it, an entrepreneur is someone who takes an innovation to market while small business owner is someone who, well, runs a small business. 

This of course raises the question of what innovation is and for insight into this I would recommend taking at look at the series of blog posts written by Shawn Cunningham earlier this year:

• Quick recap: what is an innovation system?
• The difference between invention and innovation
• Innovation is not linear