INNOVEST ME, DBWC's Think tank partners are happy to share the below article about entrepreneurs.
It is an interesting light read that tries to answer the question of: "Are entrepreneurs born or made?".

Happy Reading !

This is my reply to the question which was posted by Catarina Alexon re: "Are entrepreneurs born or made?" ( see her blog at http://catarinasworld.com/entrepreneurship-do-genes-play-a-part/#IDComment84054241)

Catarina, just a brief comment (I only have a minute, but the topic is "dear" to my heart :-). I did my doctoral dissertation in 1991-1996 at Univ. of North Carolina-Chapel Hill Mngt Dept, specifically Organizational Behavior. I studied approx. 120 small-biz owners in Poland (ie, people who ACTUALLY did start their own businesses, with vast majority of the subject being 2-10 employee-firms...all located in Poland, near Lodz). Each of 120 subjects/biz owners (or, at least key decision-maker with financial stake in the firm) completed a lengthy questionnaire. Then, each subject was interviewed IN PERSON for approx 30-60 min (I speak Polish).

Objective of the study: Focus on goal setting and various personality/psychological variables to see if there's a relationship between 1) those personality variables and 2) entrepreneur's/company's success.

Success was relatively easy to measure: it consisted of entrepreneur's all savings, capital, etc. In short: a successful entrepreneur would have a nice house/apt and drive a nice car. A less successful one would drive an old Fiat and live in a tiny, communist era apt.

As you can see, I was fortunate re: my timing of this study. Success is notoriously difficult/impossible to measure (especially in a field like OB). Also, almost all subject started with no/little money. There was no banking system. No capital sources. Anyway....

The findings of the study led me to believe that entrepreneurs are BORN rather than MADE.
- few of the subjects had any biz eduction (marketing??? what's that??? :-)
- few of the subject had experience of working for themselves (most used to have government jobs)

In short: biz experience and financial resources played a minor role in determining success.

What seemed to make a difference?
- goal setting (without subjects realizing that this is what they were actually doing
- proactive/positive "attitude as in: "IF I WORK HARD, ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE"....I guess we could call it high level of confidence, persistence, perseverance, etc. HARD WORK ALONE DIDN'T MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE.
- on BEHAVIORAL LEVEL: successful individuals were considerably better at making adjustments to their initial plans, improvising, etc. In theoretical terms, it's pretty much a goal-setting/feedback/adjustment/outcome loop. So, successful biz owners seemed to be better than less successful ones at recognizing a need for change/adaptation and/or acting quicker/better on "signs" (ie, feedback) that an adjustment/strategy change etc.
When asked: "why did you decide to do this or that?", they'd usually credit their "intuition" as the key component NEEDED TO SURVIVE in such an uncertain/confusing environment.

To summarize:
- success was positively related to various psychological variables I mentioned above ("optimism" would be a good word to describe it)
- successful biz owners engaged in more methodical goal setting/adjustment process.

Personal interviews were extremely valuable. Either I or a Polish PhD student conducted those interviews AFTER we reviewed about 6 pages of questions. We noticed a tremendous difference between people whom we labeled as "successful" vs "less successful". I don't think this part of the study got published - it was not very scientific, to say the least :-). However, successful entrepreneurs (compared to less successful ones) seemed more energetic, extroverted, optimistic, full of plans for the future, etc. THEY WERE NOT UNREALISTIC OR DELUSIONAL.

In my opinion, entrepreneurs are born rather than made....education helps, etc. But, whenever I talked to these people, I always thought to myself: IT WAS THAT "INNER" DRIVE AND SENSE OF PURPOSE/CONFIDENCE THAT LED TO SUCCESS. I doubt that work experience/education would have made much of a difference when those individuals DECIDED TO RISK IT ALL for the sake of a biz venture. Yes, risk-taking was also correlated with success.
Regards and sorry about disorganized/rushed reply.
Jay Y.

Jay B. Yurkiewicz, Ph.D.
Managing Partner/Owner at BFY Europe, BFY Associates & BFY Partners