The green entrepreneur: Opportunist, Maverick or Visionary?

Amongst the wealth of research on entrepreneurship in general, there has, hitherto, been surprisingly little investigation into the motives and influences on green entrepreneurs. This paper presents a range of frameworks for understanding and investigating the genesis of green start-ups. The scope encompasses all possible forms of new green businesses and the main analytical approach taken is to review the literature on approaches to classifying entrepreneurs with a view to gaining useful insights for the green context. An exploratory typology of green entrepreneurs is proposed which produces four "ideal types": innovative opportunists, visionary champions, ethical mavericks and accidental enviropreneurs. Conceptualising the bigger picture within which green entrepreneurs emerge, a structure–action framework (S-I-M-A/C-P-C) is presented to convey the iterative nature of organisational and societal greening. A range of research approaches to further investigate the motives of, and influences on, green entrepreneurs are explored, with a view to the ultimate aim of providing insights for policy makers and educators into ways to foster green entrepreneurship.