The entrepreneurial process is social

At the invitation of a collaboration of all of Iceland's regional development agencies, Arnar Sigurðsson gave a talk entitled The Entrepreneurial Proces on January 7th. The presentation was the first in a series of presentations under the name Curious Entrepreneurs, which will be online talks aimed at entrepreneurs and others interested in innovation around Iceland.

The talk was attended by close to 60 participants. In it, Arnar based his definition of an entrepreneur on that given by French economist Jean Baptiste Say as one that “shifts economic resources out of an area of lower and into an area of higher productivity and greater yield”. Arnar however pointed out that the value created in this process is not limited to financial growth, and therefore entrepreneurs are not only startup founders in the 20s, but can be found among non-profits such as women's organisations or governments.

Arnar then attempted to outline an abstract timeline of the process many innovative projects go through, from an idea, to testing, scaling up, disruption of status quo and later normalization. He stressed that while entprepreneurship taking on radical innovation is inherently uncertain, and therefore carries a lot of risk to the individuals taking part in it, it is none the less vital for society as a whole to keep experimenting.

Society should therefore take collective responsibility for supporting entrepreneurs, or those who go off the beaten path. In return, entrepreneurship should strive towards value creation that benefits society as a whole, and not individualistic value capture.

A recording of the talk, which was given in Icelandic, can be played below.