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Although the words are used so often together – I go to a business & enterprise school; I’m on a business & enterprise programme; I teach business & enterprise – they couldn’t be further apart in terms of meaning, both everyday and literal.

Enterprise comes from French entreprendre, meaning “to take in hand”. An abstract meaning of the word is a “readiness to undertake challenges” or “spirit of daring”. Business comes from Old English bisigness, meaning “care, anxiety, occupation”. Recorded definition in 1727 is a sense of “trade, commercial engagement”.

Yet so often the differences are overlooked. So much so that they are now almost inextricably lumped together; not necessarily a bad thing, but it is crucially important to note the differences.

It’s an age old dispute, really. To properly figure out which is which, the most simple trial is to put an organistion under a spotlight. You ask about their ultimate goals, the ends to which their means are being hauled. Simplified, it’s a question of whether an organisation is entirely profits-based, like banks or loan companies – businesses, or if the focus is more on innovation, a common quality of successful enterprises. It is this innovation that really sets the two apart.

A businesses, more often than not, sets out to grow and expand. These can be seen as empires. The most ambitious aim to fill international-sized shoes, colonising the world in pockets, eventually ensuring as a result, strength in numbers and power in its profits. An example of this pseudo-imperial kind of gain is the goliath of fast-food, McDonalds. It’s obvious, but it makes things clear cut: though perhaps classed as innovative 50 years ago, it is now so widespread and profitable that any kind of straying from the road of consistent growth is to come up with a new burger.

The approach is linear, the goals are relatively straightforward: grow from a worth of one sum of money to a greater sum of money. Banks are a good example because they deal exclusively with money. Their service is managing money, and they expand monetarily as a result. When innovation arrives within such a company, it is nominal and self-serving, like a method to improve sales or how to engage customers. Even so – this kind of thinking does require a little creativity.

An enterprise is also creative. But, an enterprise sets out to make things different. Entrepreneurs may start businesses, but entrepreneurs don’t necessarily run businesses. An enterprise, on the other hand, is started up and run by entrepreneurs: always progressively innovating and creating. Google is one of the most successful enterprises in the world. They recognised a problem with the internet early: the challenge of finding useful information, products, and services online. To make money, they pioneered internet advertising.

They are always innovating. Email service, web browser, social networking, mobile phones – continuing to seize opportunities where they can envisage something better.

It’s these two mindsets that set the two ‘types’ of organisation apart from each other. We have on one side business minds who focus on the corporate process of making money – tweaking an already existing system, that of making money, to be better. And on the other side we have enterprises who don’t look inside the company but outside, spotting what can be done to improve things in the real world – providing useful products and services which are creative visions of making things better. One is corporate, one is creative.

It isn’t a case of good guy vs. bad guy, either. Whichever way you look at it, there is merit in being money savvy – there is merit to having good ideas. However, this is a call for more enterprises. There are so many people just making money, albeit cleverly, without necessarily providing something truly innovative. If there is to be any progression made we need to think more progressively. Innovation, therefore, is the key.

IDEO, a global design consultancy, is constantly asking questions about the future; they analyse what already exists, and propose what would work better in its place. Tim Brown, CEO of the “innovation and design” firm, spoke at TEDGlobal 2009, calling for a shift in design from nifty and fashionable to “local, collaborative, participatory ‘design thinking’.” From the unnecessary to the useful. Creative people solve problems.

Where does this leave the corporate business? Is it really just trade and commercial engagement? Well, to external voyeurs, it may seem that their skill is in moving money around for their best advantage – managing money. Their jurisdiction is finance and nothing more. Right?

Wrong. For a businesses to develop fast, all systems have to be streamlined and made more efficient. Industrial engineering is concerned with this at all stages: development, improvement, implementation, and evaluation of various sectors of business (information, financial, management, to name a few). Businesses do look to improve themselves, working internally to solve problems within their organisation. Improvement is high on the task list of enterprise. This is the similarity. The difference: business innovates internally – enterprise innovates externally.

These are the two methods of thinking that permeate both ‘opposing’ sides. Linear against non-linear, systematic against opportunistic, corporate against creative. But they shouldn’t necessarily be ‘against’ each other. As I began this, I mentioned that Business & Enterprise are “lumped together” everywhere, as schemes, lessons, schools, degree courses. What I didn’t mention is why they work well together. Why? It’s simple, really.

Both transfer their skills to the other. You cannot live off an enterprise – nor can you propel it forwards with good intentions; you need money to live and you need money to run companies. This is where an astute business mind comes into play. Not only this, but often an idea may arise that is a great one, but the person who that idea came from, its ‘thinker’, may not know exactly where to go with it.

Enter the industrial engineers. This time they aren’t evaluating systems, they are evaluating ideas. These need managing as much as anything else – an idea, no matter how well-meaning or genuinely useful it may be, will not go anywhere if it isn’t implemented properly. Thinkers may not always be able to dissect their own ideas, their own creations, as efficiently and as accurately as someone who takes things apart as a living. To this end, ideas can progress, be bought into existence, and make money.

Entrepreneurial skills can help businesses in a similar way. In fact, just one skill can help: creativity. Banks can brainstorm how to genuinely make banking easier for its customers. McDonalds, in fact, recently boasted a new design in its restaurants, which is probably the brainchild of creative minds. Whole empires of business could look at opportunities to make the whole sector in which they work better for everybody. The combining of business and enterprise, or enterprise and business, isn’t just for educational purposes at degree level and lower. It is an idea in itself – the pairing of these two very different methods of working, for themselves and for other people, could produce powerhouses of industry.

Look at it this way: the two make up the character of an inventor. Enterprise makes up the eyes and ears to spot and hear opportunity when it knocks, the brain to recognise problems and come up with solutions; business is the body, the dextrous hands to pull things together in construction, the legs to carry the invention to the market, and the mouth to sell it.

by Russell Thomas

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Russell is writing intern at THECUBE
He also runs, edits, and writes for Creative Boom London