Entrepreneurial Success

Question

Do you agree that the entrepreneural success follows from personal efforts, knowledge and practice rather than a pre-ordained destiny?

Answer

People who view entrepreneurship as a leadership/management skill and that are proponents of the trait theory would argue that entrepreneurial leaders/managers are borne with the skills and attributes needed to be a successful entrepreneur and they cannot be learnt by other people. Therefore, these people, such as Galton (1869) would argue that entrepreneurial success is a pre-ordained destiny. However, more modern academics who study entrepreneurship, such as Petkova (2008) would argue the opposite. They would argue that to become a successful entrepreneur a person needs to learn the skills to run a successful business, they would need to practice implementing these skills and that they would learn from their mistakes in order to become a successful entrepreneur. Ultimately, on the balance of the established literature that has been published on the subject of entrepreneurship, it would appear that the literature does agree with the title question that entrepreneurial success is a result of personal efforts, knowledge and practice.

References

Galton, F. (1869). Hereditary genius. New York: Appleton. Petkova, A. (2008) A theory of entrepreneurial learning from performance errors. International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal. 5(4):345-367