FME Study Guide: Entrepreneurship Vocabulary

Complete glossary flashcards covering key entrepreneurship vocabulary from the FME study guide.

Alertness

Being ready to notice and act on opportunities.

Entrepreneurial mindset

Recognizing and acting on opportunities despite uncertainty.

Entrepreneurship

Finding or creating opportunities and taking action on them.

Entrepreneurial passion

Strong positive emotion that motivates an entrepreneur.

Entrepreneurial self-efficacy

Belief in your ability to start a business.

Creativity

Using knowledge in new ways.

Bisociation

Connecting seemingly unrelated things to create something new.

Divergent thinking

Generating as many ideas as possible.

Convergent thinking

Narrowing ideas to find the most promising ones.

Lateral thinking

Approaching problems in unexpected ways.

Imagination-based strategies

Using imagination to create ideas without existing constraints.

Metacognition

Understanding how you think and make decisions.

Growth mindset

Believing your abilities can improve through effort.

Fixed mindset

Believing your abilities are set traits.

Grit

Working hard toward long-term goals.

Resilience / Psychological resilience

Recovering from challenges and adversity by using thoughts, perceptions, and coping behaviors.

Deliberate practice

Focused effort to improve performance.

Reflection

Reviewing and evaluating experiences.

Improvisation

Creating something spontaneously.

Mindshift

Changing your mindset to become more entrepreneurial.

Constructive thought patterns

Productive ways of thinking that improve performance.

Behavior-focused strategies

Managing behavior through self-observation, goal-setting, and rewards.

Natural reward strategies

Making tasks more enjoyable by focusing on their positive aspects.

Self-leadership

Directing and motivating yourself.

Self-observation

Understanding how and why you behave in certain ways.

Self-goal setting

Setting goals for yourself.

Self-reward

Rewarding yourself for achieving goals.

Self-cueing

Using reminders to stay focused.

Self-punishment / self-correcting feedback

Examining mistakes to avoid repeating them.

Habit

A behavior performed regularly, often unconsciously.

Confirmation bias

Favoring information that supports your existing beliefs.

Idea

A conception formed in the mind.

Opportunity

A chance to create value through a new or desirable product, service, or process.

Market opportunity

The level of customer or market demand for an offering.

Need

Something desirable or necessary that is missing.

Latent needs

Needs people do not realize they have.

Migraine headache problems (MHPs)

Problems people are willing to pay to have solved.

Insight

A realization that reveals a need or human behavior.

Prior knowledge

Knowledge gained through life and work experience.

Find pathway

Assuming opportunities already exist and can be discovered.

Search pathway

Actively searching for an opportunity when you do not know what business to start.

Effectuate pathway

Using your existing skills, knowledge, and abilities to find an opportunity.

Effectuation / Effectuation theory

Acting to shape a future that is unpredictable.

Design pathway

Finding opportunities by focusing on unmet customer needs.

Design thinking

A human-centered approach that considers people's needs, technical feasibility, and economic viability.

Empathy

Understanding other people's feelings, circumstances, and needs.

Observation

Closely watching potential customers in their environment.

AEIOU framework

Categorizing observations by activities, environments, interactions, objects, and users.

Hypothesis

An assumption to be tested.

Market

Where supply and demand meet.

Supply

Sellers competing for customers.

Demand

Customers' desire for available goods and services.

Customers

People in the market segments served by a business.

Customer

Someone who pays for a product or service.

Consumers

People who actually use a product or service.

End users

People who use the product and provide feedback.

Economic buyers

Customers who can approve large purchases.

Decision makers

People with authority to make purchasing decisions.

Saboteurs

People who can delay or veto a purchasing decision.

Recommenders

People who evaluate products and tell others about them.

Customer personas

Profiles of ideal customers based on research.

Customer psychology

Understanding why people make purchasing decisions.

Customer journey map

A visual representation of the customer's experience.

Need-finding interview

An interview to understand a customer's problem or need.

Feedback interview

An interview to get feedback on an existing product or prototype.

Primary research

Collecting firsthand data through interviews, surveys, and focus groups.

Secondary research

Using existing information from websites, publications, and government sources.

Market validation

Testing whether customers have a need and will pay for a solution.

Evidence-based entrepreneurship

Collecting data and testing ideas before committing to an opportunity.

Experiment

A test to prove or disprove an idea.

Exploratory experimentation

Testing the market to gain early feedback and knowledge.

Pilot experiment

A small-scale test of a product or service.

Feasibility study

Evaluating whether an idea is worth pursuing.

MVP (minimum viable product)

A basic version of a product used to gather customer learning.

Product–market fit

When an offering meets customer needs.

Product application

A product or service created to meet a demand.

User-driven prototypes

Early prototypes created by users, such as sketches.

Storyboard

Drawings or sketches arranged in sequence to show an idea.

Use case

An illustration of how a user interacts with software.

Market sizing

Estimating potential customers, revenue, and profitability.

TAM

Total available market; all potential market demand.

SAM

Serviceable available market; the part of TAM the business intends to serve.

SOM

Share of market the business realistically expects to reach.

Mass market

A large group of customers with similar needs.

Niche market

A small market with specific customer needs.

Segmented market

A market divided into groups with different needs.

Diversified market

Customer segments with unrelated needs.

Multisided markets

Markets serving two or more mutually independent customer groups.

Uncertainty

Lack of clarity about future events.

Business model

How a business creates, delivers, and captures value.

Business Model Canvas (BMC)

A one-page overview of a business using nine components.

Lean Canvas

An adapted Business Model Canvas for startups.

Business plan

A formal document covering the business, marketing, operations, development, and finances.

Business brief

A short document outlining the company, value proposition, customers, and milestones.

Concept statement

A written representation of a product or service vision.

Planning

Envisioning what a business will do and how it will do it.

Offering

What a business provides to a customer segment and how it reaches them.

Infrastructure

The people, technology, facilities, suppliers, and partners needed to deliver value.

Founding team

People with complementary skills who work together to build a business.

Founders' agreement

An agreement between founders about important business issues.