- Category:American entrepreneurs (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) (restore|cache|CfD)
Note Category:American entrepreneurs was Merge into Category:American businesspeople by the CfD being reviewed at this DRV. -- Jreferee t/c 23:30, 23 October 2007 (UTC) Useful, encyclopedic, important, distinct, well-populated category was hastily deleted Wikidemo 17:14, 20 October 2007 (UTC) Overturn (comment by nominator). There is a clear difference between a "businessperson" or an "businessman", and an "entrepreneur", in American English and business culture. It's a useful distinction that many erudite people make and are interested in; hence it is encyclopedic. Before the deletion/merge we had more than 600 people in the category. The deletion discussion was very brief with little participation, and in my opinion missed the point. We have one article for Business and another from Entrepreneurship, so we obviously recognize the difference as notable. There are books, articles, papers, academic departments, etc., on entrepreneurship, often within larger business-oriented organizations. For example, the New York Times has a "business" section but also a topic on entrepreneurship. [6]. Harvard Business School teaches business, but has a program and department in entrepreneurship [7]. There are tens of thousands of essays, articles, books, etc., on the difference. I could find find better references but here are some quick ones - [8] [9] [10] [11]. If the category distinction is good enough for the New York Times and Harvard Business School, it should be good enough for Wikipedia. In brief, a businessman is someone who runs or manages a business operation ([12]), whereas an entrepreneur is someone who starts a new enterprise, product, service, or the like, through their own efforts and capital, outside of the confines of a large structured organization ([13], [14], [15]). Most (but not all) entrepreneurs are businesspeople; most businesspeople are not entrepreneurs. I think we should restore the category and reverse the category changes. I have no opinion on the category deletions for other countries, however; the usage of the word "entrepreneur" is different in American versus British English, and most countries (and even most sectors of the US) do not have a comparable culture of entrepreneurship.Wikidemo 17:14, 20 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment - we should also overturn and restore Category:Entrepreneurs on similar grounds. That deletion discussion was here. Wikidemo 17:21, 20 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse deletion, CFD was valid and unanimous. --Coredesat 19:46, 20 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse rename. CFD was indeed valid and unanimous. It ran from Oct 13 to Oct 19, not hasty in any sense of the word. By the way, you might want to notify the closing admin of this DRV nomination. --Kbdank71 21:36, 20 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Will do. Thanks for the reminder. Wikidemo 07:15, 21 October 2007 (UTC)...Wait a minute. You *are* the closing administrator, right? My objection is not procedural, that's fine and you made the fair decision in light of the discusison. Rather, I think the result is clearly wrong in the context of the American entrepreneurial business subculture, which draws a sharp line between those businesspeople who are entrepreneurs and those who are not. Perhaps people responded without thinking this through - I haven't seen a comment in the original discussion or so far here that reaches the underlying issue. I can still inform you of the debate if you wish :) -- Wikidemo 07:49, 21 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Nah, I was just trying to inject some humor. :) --Kbdank71 14:40, 21 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- You succeeded. Thanks, and sorry that I forgot to notify you. If only we could all be so sporting about deletions. Wikidemo 14:49, 21 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Eh, I look at it this way: I'll give my opinion on just about anything, but at the end of the day, if consensus doesn't go my way, the earth will keep on spinning. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, on wikipedia that requires getting that worked up about. If we're not having fun doing this, it's time to quit. --Kbdank71 20:57, 21 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse deletion/renaming. The trouble with Wikipedia is, it doesn't have any unambiguous meaning for entrepreneur, to parody something somebody didn't actually say. Sam Blacketer 23:06, 20 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Overturn or permit renaming (somewhat pointless as of now, due to the cats being depopulated) to Category:Business founders or something if unambiguity is required. There is a clear distinction between people who merely work in business and people who found businesses. (In fact, the skillsets and interests are often incompatible.) When Steve Preston was made Small Business Administration head, small businessmen (entrepreneurs) were concerned that he had never started a business, merely worked for one. There is a difference. Category:Businesspeople is horrendously overpopulated at all levels and has too little breakdown by industry, and far less by role. This deletion didn't help matters. --Dhartung | Talk 04:02, 22 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Nor is this CFD take two. --Kbdank71 13:33, 22 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- I'll say what I think about the outcome. It was ill-informed and wrong. --Dhartung | Talk 17:38, 22 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- And yet you chose to equate businessmen and entrepreneurs in your argument to overturn (small businessmen (entrepreneurs)). --Kbdank71 17:57, 22 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- There's no reasonable claim that businesspeople and entrepreneurs are the same thing. The question as I understand it is whether having a sub-category here for entrepreneurs is helpful. I think so, and suspect that the 600+ Wikipedians who added that category to articles thought so too. If I'm sifting through a list of entrepreneurs, I want to find people who started new businesses, not the CFO of Enron or the head of a bank.Wikidemo 18:41, 22 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- I really don't want to get testy or presume bad faith, but I sometimes wonder if people even read the newspaper. Entrepreneurs are a subset of businesspeople. Primarily, they are small business owners, unless they are lucky, in which case they are large business owners. The key difference is whether their own money is invested in the business. Lee Iacocca is not an entrepreneur, he was a hired gun, and a very good one. John DeLorean had the same career path as Iacocca until a point, when he struck out on his own and founded a company with his own money (and that of others). He was an entrepreneur. There are thousands of notable businesspeople who are not in any conceivable form entrepreneurs. But all entrepreneurs are, of course, businesspeople. Business founder (as I proposed above) is a near-match, but really it is possible to take over a business and still be an entrepreneur. People who are hired to run a business at any level, however, are not entrepreneurs. They may accumulate a stock investment in a company but they have not underwritten the business themselves. At the other end of the scale are investors who may have an ownership interest in a company but are not in a management role. All are essential roles, yet all are distinct within the larger class of businesspeople, just as are engineers, managers, secretaries, or accountants. Put it another way: businessmen who fail get fired; entrepreneurs who fail go bankrupt. --Dhartung | Talk 19:01, 23 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- I read the newspaper, but more importantly, I check the dictionary. Entrepreneur: a person who organizes and manages any enterprise, esp. a business, usually with considerable initiative and risk. Which correlates with what you just said: "But all entrepreneurs are, of course, businesspeople." Now, if we had merged businesspeople into entrepreneurs, I can see the reasoning for overturning. But the merge was entrepreneurs into businesspeople. Lee Iacocca has not been moved into entrepreneurs, because he isn't one. But seeing as all entrepreneurs are businesspeople, then the merge made sense. Your comments seem to argue in favor of endorsing the merge, not opposing it. --Kbdank71 19:13, 23 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment I have only said that it is a subset, i.e. a subcategory. We do not merge up all subcategories simply because there is a parent category into which they may be merged. Please do not engage in this misconstruction of my words; I am losing my ability to take your arguments in good faith. --Dhartung | Talk 21:12, 24 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- The CFD was unanimous, and unanimously wrong. Sometimes we blow it and we need to fix it when we do, and DRV is in part a venue for doing so. A new argument is given above, namely that these really are different categorizations, reflecting different roles and different fields of study. That argument is sufficient reason to overturn the close as it relates to this category. I don't know if the other nationalities also need to be separately distinguished, not knowing the literature for them. Relisting at editorial discretion, but that old AFD certainly should be overturned as just plain wrong. GRBerry 22:06, 22 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse close/permit recreation - The closer interpreted the debate correctly. However, businesspeople and entrepreneurs are not the same thing. An entrepreneur includes one who assumes the financial risk of starting and operating a business venture and includes "An innovator of business enterprise who recognizes opportunities to introduce a new product, a new process or an improved organization, and who raises the necessary money, assembles the factors for production and organizes an operation to exploit the opportunity".[16] The the category American entrepreneurs would take its meaning from the Entrepreneur. The Entrepreneur should be footnoted to provide an accepted main meaning of entrepreneur in Wikipedia's Entrepreneur article that would make clear what an Entrepreneur is for purposes of the American entrepreneurs category. Permission to recreate the American entrepreneurs category on the condition that the category itself includes a clear membership criteria. -- Jreferee t/c 23:45, 23 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment I agree that the category should have clear criteria for inclusion. --Dhartung | Talk 21:44, 24 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse. The category was correctly evaluated as difficult to categorize correctly.--Mike Selinker 02:03, 24 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
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