While there are many specific niches and approaches, entrepreneurship is broadly categorized into four main types based on their goals, scale, and impact:

1. Small Business Entrepreneurship:
   • Focus: Creating a self-sustaining business that provides a living for the owner(s) and potentially a few employees, often serving a local market.
   • Characteristics: These are the “mom-and-pop” shops, local restaurants, independent consultants, or small online stores. They typically don’t aim for massive growth or venture capital funding, but rather for stability, profitability, and personal autonomy.
   • Examples: A local bakery, a freelance graphic designer, a small construction company, a personal trainer.
2. Scalable Startup Entrepreneurship:
   • Focus: Building a business designed for rapid and widespread growth, often with the goal of disrupting existing industries or creating new markets.
   • Characteristics: These entrepreneurs typically seek external investment (e.g., venture capital, angel investors) to fuel their aggressive growth plans. They often leverage technology and aim for global or national reach. The idea is to create something that can be replicated and expanded quickly.
   • Examples: Tech startups like Facebook, Uber, or Airbnb in their early stages.
3. Large Company Entrepreneurship (Intrapreneurship):
   • Focus: Innovation and development of new products, services, or business units within an existing, established large corporation.
   • Characteristics: This type of entrepreneurship involves employees acting like entrepreneurs, taking initiative and risks to drive growth and new opportunities for the company. They leverage the resources and infrastructure of the parent company.
   • Examples: A new division created by Google to explore a nascent technology, or an established car manufacturer developing an entirely new electric vehicle line.
4. Social Entrepreneurship:
   • Focus: Addressing a social, environmental, or cultural problem through a business model. While they may generate revenue, the primary goal is social impact, not profit maximization.
   • Characteristics: Social entrepreneurs aim to create sustainable solutions to societal issues. Their “bottom line” often includes social good alongside financial viability (sometimes referred to as a “triple bottom line” of people, planet, and profit). They can operate as non-profits, for-profits, or hybrid models.
   • Examples: Organizations providing affordable clean water solutions, businesses employing marginalized communities, companies developing sustainable energy technologies, or fair-trade enterprises.

These four types represent the most common classifications, though many entrepreneurs may exhibit characteristics from more than one category or evolve their approach over time.