It’s not in the genes

We often talk about great business leaders like Richard Branson, Warren Buffett and Bill Gates as being examples of “born entrepreneurs”.

You know the type – the man or woman who started a lemonade stand at the age of four, a record label at the age of 12, an IT company at the age of 18 and a funds management firm at the age of 25.

But new research out of the US suggests that entrepreneurs aren’t born, but are rather created by the circumstances they find themselves in, their education, exposure to other entrepreneurs and their networks.

Vivek Wadhwa, a former entrepreneurs who is now an academic at Harvard, Berkley and Duke universities, surveyed 549 successful US entrepreneurs to find out a bit about their backgrounds (you can see the research here).

He found that contrary to the idea that entrepreneurs come from entrepreneurial families and are nurtured in an entrepreneurial environment, 52% of the successful entrepreneurs were the first in their immediate families to start a business.

A further 39% had an entrepreneurial father, 7% an entrepreneurial mother and 15% had entrepreneurial siblings.

Another interesting question was whether the entrepreneurs knew by college if they were going to start their own businesses. Half said they didn’t think about it or weren’t interested, while just one quarter (far smaller than I would have thought) said they were very interested in becoming an entrepreneur.

And while we’re all fond of the idea that great entrepreneurs are high school dropouts, this research actually highlights the importance of education, with 75% of those surveyed saying they were in the top 30% of their class and the majority (52.4%) saying they were in the top 10%. Just over 95% of the respondents had a bachelor degree.

The motivation of the groups surveyed was also pretty clear, with 74.8% of respondents indicating a “desire to build wealth” as an important motivator in becoming an entrepreneur.

Finally, more than three quarters of those surveyed worked for more than six years before launching their own company, while 47.9% worked for 10 years.

There are a few caveats in extrapolating this data, particularly the fact it is a relatively small sample size and it is a group of US entrepreneurs.

However, there are some strong trends in this data which might suggest that a new type of entrepreneur is coming to the fore – the “I can do it better” entrepreneur.

These entrepreneurs are highly educated and very experienced in their chosen field. When they see a chance to seize on a money-making idea, they take the plunge on the basis that they can do better than their current employer.

When I think about the entrepreneurs that I know well, this description actually fits pretty well.

But what do you think? Are entrepreneurs born or made? What common traits to you see in entrepreneurs you deal with? Let us know in the comments section below.