Forms of Entrepreneurial Capital

Here are the three forms of entrepreneurial capital you'll need to compete as an entrepreur:

1. Human Capital: your skills, talents, and abilities. Your ability to think, write, communicate, inspire, and listen, your personal health, your creativity, your leadership skills, trustworthiness, etc.

2. Social Capital: the number and types of people you know. The more people you know and the better your "crowd," the more social capital you have. How many people do you know? How much can you rely upon them to share with you information about opportunities in your market or to spread the word about your company.

3. Financial Capital: money or access to money. Do you have investments, savings accounts, checking accounts, CDs, money market accounts, etc. you could use to support the business and pay the lender back.

Ron Burt, Hobard W. Williams Professor of Sociology and Strategy at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business, came up with this stuff. You can find his argument in Structural Holes; the Social Structure of Competition(Boston, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992, pp. 8-9) or read my blog posting for 7.15.2008.

You will need to assess your capital in each of these areas, then go on to look at what you will need to be fit as an entrepreneur.

My goal here is to promote skilled entrepreneurs. What do you think about this? If you have something substantive to add, post a comment.

This is some of the stuff that will go into my entrepreneurship course. The ideas in it supply the life's blood of my professional activities: teaching, writing, and real estate. For entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog and for entrepreneurial writing to www.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot/com.