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Despite our reliance on entrepreneurs to kindle the fire of capitalism, we still know little about what motivates them and why. That’s concerning, since the data suggest most new job growth depends on the enterprise of entrepreneurs who build new solutions for old (and new) problems. For over 200 years, scholars have sought in vain to clarify the definition of entrepreneurship and reach consensus on its meaning. According to French economist Jean-Baptiste Say, who coined the term “entrepreneur” around the dawn of the 19th century, “The entrepreneur shifts economic resources out of an area of lower and into an area of higher productivity and greater yield.” For economist Joseph Schumpeter, an entrepreneur is a “wild spirit,” driven to disrupt norms and build new commodities of enduring value. But this leads to more questions: Can this creative wildness be developed? Or are entrepreneurs, as Steve Jobs put it, born primed to put “a dent in” the universe? Starting around 2002, written use of the word “entrepreneur” kept rising, and much public discussion of entrepreneurs now fixates on the fast-falling fortunes of flashy tech founders with dubious business practices. Ultimately, not all founders fit the label “entrepreneur”—it is only the tenacious ones with the skill to manage their wild spirit that dramatically boost productivity and yield and thereby lift up whole industries, sometimes entire economies, from ruin.