All over the world entrepreneurs drive changes. They develop new products
and services, inspire others and take decisions that result in growth of their businesses.
But the world around entrepreneurs is changing and so are entrepreneurs. Life-long selfemployment
or permanent wage employment are of the past. And the way people perceive
self-employment is changing as well. And so must our thinking.
Changes in our society call for policies and programmes in support of enterprising people.
Diversity, mobility and connectivity offer new opportunities for enterprising people. Markets
are changing, become more accessible and there is less need to be bound physically to
one place for an entrepreneur.
New avenues for business are open thanks to our improved access to information, our
connectivity globally through social media and our ability to travel freely and frequently
from one country to another. With less focus on life-long (self) employment people now
combine paid work (or unpaid – house- work) with self-employment, or opt for just parttime
entrepreneurship. New, hybrid forms of enterprising emerge. This combining of work
with self-employment is rather common in developing countries, but in Europe it is a
phenomenon not yet reported on in statistics and for which policy makers and service
providers have no answers yet. Neither exist clear definitions or classifications.
This book may serve as an eye-opener: hybrid entrepreneurs are indeed around us and
deserve our attention. The research unit Financial Inclusion and New Entrepreneurship
of The Hague University of Applied Science challenges policy makers, academics and
service providers (such as educational institutes, business advisers and financial institutions)
to pay more attention to hybrid entrepreneurs, those enterprising people who intend to
create new values for a fair and sustainable society.
They might not yet been seen, but they exist…..