On what business activity do entrepreneurs spend most of their time? That is the question posed by McConkey and Short, researchers from the University of Louisiana at Monroe (See the study here). Using a questionnaire, McConkey and Short asked a sample of self-described entrepreneurs how they spend their time. The questionnaire focused on ten “roles,” or ways in which business people might spend time. For purposes of analysis, McConkey and Short grouped the ten roles into categories–interpersonal roles like leader or figurehead, information roles like mentor or spokesperson, and decisional roles like entrepreneur and negotiator. One hundred seventy-one entrepreneurs responded, reporting their time allocations on a seven-point scale with 1 indicating no time spent, and 7 indicating “a lot of time” spent.
The respondents reported that they spent most of their time working in an entrepreneurial role (defined in the questionnaire as “searching the environment for new opportunities and initiating projects to bring about change”). The mean response for the entrepreneurial role was 5.49 on the seven point scale. Ninety-two percent of the respondents also ranked this role as the most important way to use working time.
The least important way to spend time, the respondents indicated, was on interpersonal roles like leader and figurehead. Over one third of the respondents ranked those two roles as unimportant.
What can we learn from this study? Two points seem to stand out. First, we don’t call them entrepreneurs for nothing; as entrepreneurs, those surveyed in this study reported spending most of their time looking for ways to make things work better, faster, or cheaper. Second, their values are in line with their behavior; they believe that engaging in entrepreneurial activity is one of the most important uses of time.
Engaging in entrepreneurial activity is no guarantee of success. Not all entrepreneurs succeed. But the ones who do succeed help create wealth and the wealth they create has widespread effects. In this sense, entrepreneurs are like oxygen in the life blood of a free economy. They bring new ideas for products and services and ways of doing things that help make more efficient use of scarce resources.
A saintly example of a Renaissance entrepreneur is St. James of the Marche (1397-1476), a Franciscan who found a way to help bring more spending power to the poor. He is considered one of the fathers of the modern pawnshop. St. James set up montes pietatis (mountains of charity) which were nonprofit credit establishments that lent money at low rates on pawned objects.
What are some entrepreneurial activities going on in your community? What is the evidence that entrepreneurial time is being well spent?
I think that entrepreneurs need to spend most of their time
focusing on the sales and marketing portion of the business.
In one of the most influential entrepreneurship books of our
time Ready, Fire, Aim, the point was brought up that it
doesn’t matter how great your idea is if no one knows about it. How all to often people spend all their money on getting a good website, but then they have no money to attract people to it. Thank you for the article.
Thanks for the insight Ryan. I suspect that division of labor has to set in at some level of organizational size. Sales and marketing are crucial in terms of disseminating good ideas, as you point out. And I suspect too that St. James of the Marche had to spend at least some of his time getting the word out to the poor about his innovative idea to help them make ends meet. Commercial challenges abound but, happily, so does human ingenuity.