The word “entrepreneur,” of French origin, means one who “takes the between.” In my younger days, I viewed entrepreneurs as exploitative—business owners who opportunistically extracted value from an economic flow. But in fact, entrepreneurs can create the flow—or the channel in which the flow can run—by recognizing an opportunity and “taking the between.” By standing in the gap, entrepreneurs have the ability to invent opportunities that can only exist if someone… if someone does what?

The usual answer is “takes on a risk for the opportunity of a return.” Yet while entrepreneurs are commonly seen as risk takers, the best ones are actually risk mitigators: designers who create ways to get reliable results amid chaos and confusion. Entrepreneurs differ from inventors: The inventor’s task is to innovate, to create something unprecedented. The entrepreneur’s is to translate innovation into something reliable, replicable, consistently deliverable and economically viable (even when, as in the case of entrepreneurs such as Penn and Teller, what they consistently deliver is the unexpected).

Their task is to stand in the gap and take the place between present and future, between reality and opportunity, between what Bucky Fuller called present state and preferred state, between one possibility and another—and design, implement and sustain the bridge.

Why do people do this? To get rich, right? For the potential hockey stick payoff? Well, yes and no. “Everyone knows” the purpose of business is to maximize returns, whether for the entrepreneur or the shareholders. But “everyone” isn’t always right. Observers as diverse as management consulting guru Peter Drucker, Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) founder A.P. Giannini and cybernetician Stafford Beer—oh, and me—have long recognized the purpose of business as accomplishing what the business is designed to do. Profit is the consequence of doing that well, a way of keeping score.

Or, as I often tell my clients, no one thinks the purpose of their business is to pay the light bill. Utility bills are just a cost of doing business. Yet, for some reason, people think the purpose of their business is to pay their shareholders. Perhaps paying the shareholders for the use of their capital is just a cost of doing business as well.

Ask Whole Foods (Nasdaq: WFMI) CEO John Mackey to name his No. 1 stakeholder, and he won’t say shareholders. They’re No. 3. Customers? Nope, No. 2. Employees, says Mackey, are the key constituency, since without satisfied employees you don’t get satisfied customers; and without satisfied customers, you not only can’t pay your shareholders—you don’t have a business.