Howard Stevenson, who defined entrepreneurship in seven words, dies at 85
The Harvard Business School professor rewrote how founders were taught in the 1980s. His definition of entrepreneurship is still quoted more than 40 years on.
Howard H. Stevenson has died at the age of 85.
He taught at Harvard Business School, where colleagues and students came to call him the father of entrepreneurship.
His lasting contribution was a definition: entrepreneurship is the pursuit of opportunity beyond resources controlled.
Seven words that moved the subject away from biography. Entrepreneurship stopped being a description of a certain sort of person and became a description of a certain sort of behaviour.
That mattered for how the subject was taught. In the 1980s Stevenson reshaped the teaching of entrepreneurship at Harvard, building it around what founders do rather than who they are.
The definition is still repeated in business schools and boardrooms more than 40 years after he framed it.
For a founder, the useful part is the second half. Beyond resources controlled means you are expected to act before you own the money, the staff, the factory or the customer list.
It reframes the permanent shortage. A founder who lacks capital, headcount and time is not failing at the job; that gap is the job.
It also sets a limit. Pursuit of opportunity is the test, so the behaviour only counts when there is a real opportunity at the end of it, not merely a shortage of resources and a willingness to improvise.
The Harvard course he built is no longer his to teach. The definition has outlived its author, which is the fate of a good one.