Entrepreneur, Manager and Intrapreneur

The BIEAP commerce syllabus draws a careful three-way distinction among the entrepreneur, the manager, and the intrapreneur -- three roles that are sometimes confused because all three are concerned with running a business, but which differ sharply in ownership, risk, reward, and the source of authority.

An entrepreneur is the person who conceives the business idea, invests their own or borrowed capital, owns the enterprise, bears the full risk of its outcome, and is rewarded with profit -- which is uncertain, and can even turn into a loss. A manager is a paid employee, appointed by the owner(s) of the business (who may or may not be the entrepreneur personally) to plan, organise, direct, and control the day-to-day operations of the enterprise on their behalf; a manager does not own the enterprise, does not personally bear its financial risk, and is rewarded with a fixed salary regardless of whether the enterprise makes a profit or a loss in a given year. An intrapreneur is an employee within an already-existing organisation who is given the freedom and resources to behave like an entrepreneur inside that organisation -- to develop a new product, process, or internal venture using the parent company's own resources, while remaining an employee of that company and drawing a salary rather than personally owning the venture or bearing its full financial risk.