The emergence of biosphere entrepreneurship: are social and business entrepreneurship obsolete?

This article combines entrepreneurship, economics and sustainability to build a new theory of biosphere entrepreneurship. Going beyond business and social entrepreneurship, which add value to economic and social spheres, respectively, biosphere entrepreneurship adds value to the biosphere. The purpose of this article is to define biosphere entrepreneurship, and to devise and extend mental models (frameworks) relating entrepreneurship and climate change in order to facilitate theory building. Using images and visual depictions, the article elaborates a series of illustrative candidate frameworks that suggest a theoretical model of biosphere entrepreneurship. The article aims to show how the Earth, humanity, and the economy are connected through negative and positive entrepreneurship. It extends extant frameworks from the fields of financial and capital, entrepreneurial allocation, risk and survival, value and disvalue creation, growth and de-growth, socio-cultural frameworks, and entrepreneurial opportunity in order to substantiate the existence of entrepreneurial activity that adds value to Earth. The article concludes with implications for entrepreneurship education. What should educators be doing to help our young entrepreneurs come to grips with existential and catastrophic risks to the planet? (Includes 11 colour figures)