It is amazing how few American or English speaking people know that the French word "entrepreneur" meaning "between taking" refers to mapping whether the people will be freer to be productive in the system to be put in place after guillotining royalty's over-selfish control of assets than it was before.This is a pretty interesting question ... very thought provoking.
In its modern usage, entrepreneur has a dynamic that does not exist in other descriptions of human activity ... bureaucrat, functionary, worker, manager, superviser. In my own case I migrated from the UK which was suffocating under womb to tomb administration to have the opportunity to be associated with business in North America that was driven by entrepreneurs and their enterprise.
Forty years later, I wonder whatever happened. Enterprise and opportunity are still very powerful motivators ... but mere motivation without some parameters about what goals are important ... and the results are not going to be very good.
While there has been huge progress in areas like science and technology ... epitomised by Moore's Law in solid state physices where cost halved and speed doubled every 18 months ... the overall progress of society has been painstakingly slow. Overall wealth has increased in the global north according to many economic measures ... but rapidly only for a few, and not at all for the vast majority ... and in the global south the overall wealth has declined despite a huge global demand for natural resources.
So while the idea of entrepreneurs, and enterprise and entrepreneurship are all good ideas, these ideas need to be combined with some sort of framework that helps to get the effort to result in some good.
This is a challenge ... and part of the Tr-Ac-Net mission.
Sincerely
Peter Burgess
