Advising Entrepreneurial Students
Glossary
Please note that these entries are in logical groupings, rather than in alphabetical order
| Enterprising attributes | A specific set of personal attributes, eg hard-working, innovative, independent. |
| Entrepreneur | A person who creates opportunities and converts them into value (profit, social benefit, etc). Usually strongly driven, independent people who expect to build a significant enterprise. |
| Intrapreneur | An entrepreneur who works as an employee an organisation. Prepared to fit within the organisation culture, but pushes the boundaries |
| Altrepreneur | A person (usually enterprising rather than strongly entrepreneurial) who runs a life-style business to provide them with work/life flexibility or to pursue a hobby or interest. |
| Default entrepreneurs | A person (usually enterprising rather than entrepreneurial) who runs a business because there are limited opportunities for employment, eg because of the sector they are in, geographic mobility, or social issues. |
| New venture | A phrase often used to cover setting up any sort of new organisation - a business, a social enterprise, or a new team within a larger business. |
| Enterprise | An independent organisation - eg a business or social enterprise |
| Social Enterprise | An enterprise with the 'triple bottom line' of profit, social and environmental benefits. |
| Interprise | Sometimes used to describe an enterprise set up by an intrapreneur inside a larger organisation |
| Business | A privately owned enterprise run primarily for profit |
| SME | Small or Medium Enterprise. The enterprise is a business which is at least 75% privately owned. The EU definition also including turnover and capital limits. |
| Micro-business | A business with less than 10 employees. |
| Small business | A business with 10 to 49 employees |
| Medium business | A business with 50 to 250 employees |
| Life-style business | A business run primarily to provide the owner with a satisfactory living, work/life flexibility and/or to enable them pursue a hobby or interest. |
| Self-employed | A one-person business (no employees). The natural choice for someone who is enterprising, but not necessarily very entrepreneurial, and has sale-able skills and knowledge. This is the norm in some sectors - eg creative. May be a sole-trader or a limited company. |
| Contractor | A person who works on a contract basis with another organisation. In some sectors (eg IT, construction, project management) they are almost like employees, but are actually self-employed through intermediary agencies. The tax people do not like this arrangement and have introduced legislation(called IR35) to try and limit it. |
| Sole-trader business | A business owned and run by an individual personally - who takes all the benefits, and all the risks. May have any number of employees. |
| Limited company | A business 'incorporated' as a limited liability business. Owned by the shareholders. The Directors are employees, and need not own shares. |
| Partnership business | A business run by two or more individuals jointly. As with 'sole trader' May have any number of employees. Can now be incorporated a 'limited liability partnerships'. |
| Stakeholders | Stakeholders are the network of people who can have an effect on your business, customers, suppliers, funders, VAT inspectors, competitors, business advisers etc. The best SMEs manage their stakeholders very carefully. |
| AGCAS | Association of Graduate Careers Advisory Services www.agcas.org.uk |
| NCGE | National Council for Graduate Entrepreneurship www.ncge.org.uk |
| 'Graduate Prospects' | Graduate careers website www.prospects.ac.uk |