ABSTRACT
Jack Kemp's boast and Jean-Claude Trichet's lament touched on some of the principal problems confronting post-industrial states—business competitiveness, its relationship to economic growth and employment, and the role played by entrepreneurs in capitalist economies. Despite all the attention that entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship has received, there is little consensus about exactly who the "risk-taking entrepreneurs" are, to use Kemp's terms, or how they generate growth or create wealth. The use of the term suggests that it has a special meaning; that entrepreneurship is somehow distinct from usual or normal business activity. The term entrepreneur is French, and according to one authority, was formed in the Middle Ages to refer "to a person who is active, who gets things done." The banker and economist Richard Cantillon redefined the entrepreneur as risk-taking and risk-bearing traders who bought goods at a certain price on their own account in one place and later re-sold them at another "at an uncertain price."
