At the recent Switch conference in Porto, I touched briefly on whether entrepreneurialism is compatible with the collaborative nature of Social Media and Enterprise 2.0.  It seems to me that there is an inherent clash between the two approaches.

Although there are of course exceptions, an entrepreneur tends typically to be someone who:

• has their own clear ideas of where they should be taking the organisation
• is working towards a relatively long-term strategic goal
• only shares their knowledge to the extent necessary to achieve their goals
• tends to have a hierarchical attitude towards organisational structure
• launches a business very locally and perhaps later spreads to other geographic regions

The above attributes do not marry well with the collaborative nature of Social Business, wherein:

• strategy is often the result of crowdsourcing ideas
• the web is usually used to identify the next incremental step, not the long-term goal
• information is shared openly with complete strangers
• organisations tend to be very flat and relatively unstructured
• from the outset, businesses tend to be global

To succeed in this highly interconnected world, a new breed of entrepreneur is needed.  Entrepreneurs of the future will need to be:

• less self-centred and more open to others’ ideas
• more prepared to share their own ideas with the world
• less convinced of their own superior status in the organisation

But there are definitely some attributes that have always been important for an entrepreneur that do not change in this Web 2.0 world.  They must always:

• have enormous drive to succeed
• be prepared to work very long hours  often to the detriment of their personal life
• believe in their goal
• look after and support their team

and above all have the humility to accept that they don’t know everything and can always learn more from those around them.

I’m sure that many readers will disagree with my comments here, so your thoughts on the subject would be very welcome.

@demeto