Are Entrepreneurs Born or Made?

Since the late 18th century, business has constituted a main composition of the society. As the success of Jobs Steve, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, many people start their own business in chase of profit. There are entrepreneurs growing everyday while some others bankrupting. We start thinking whether entrepreneurs are born. You may think that entrepreneurs are born successful, and they owned an enormous business. However, entrepreneur is not defined as the one who has made their business tremendous, but the one who starts his own company and employs himself (Mariotti and Glackin, 2010). Therefore, anyone can become an entrepreneur if he or she starts his or her own business and works for himself or herself. There are no boundaries among people, but your working position determines whether you are an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs are not naturally born, but nurturally made. Entrepreneurship is actually not a destiny, but a qualification. In the research “Nature or Nurture: Decoding the Entrepreneur”, it shows that the entrepreneurs share some common characteristics (Monte and London, 2011). It is the qualities that make entrepreneurs successful. Moreover, the qualities are not inherent, but gotten through education and experiences. The myth of entrepreneurship will be unveiled in this essay.

Entrepreneurs are not born. Entrepreneurs are not like athletes, they don’t need natural inherent body and muscles. An athlete’s child may grow up an athlete, but it would not happen in an entrepreneur’s family. Many businesses bankrupted everyday, including some entrepreneur’s family. However, entrepreneurs are nurtually made, and they own some special qualities and also need some trainings and experiences as athletes. Many people from non-entrepreneur’s families start their own business and become entrepreneurs everyday. Dhirubhai Ambani, the most enterprising business man who’s father is a school teacher, started his business on his own (Prakash, n.d). Warren Buffett, is not born as an entrepreneur either. He started his company when he was 27 years old using his earns from his pervious investments, made a great profit from his unique and accurate opinion on the stock market, and his Berkshire industrial Kingdom became a famous huge business in the world (Kennon, n.d). There are many examples of entrepreneurs who started their businesses as a green hand, instead of inheriting from their families. Thus we could not say that entrepreneurs are born, however, the entrepreneurs acquired many qualities that made them success.

The main quality of entrepreneurship is innovation, which is not obtained naturally. Innovation is a new product, a new technology, a new source, and a new market (Mariotti and Glakin, 2010). There are many examples of entrepreneurs bankrupted due to lack of innovation. For example, Carrozzeria Touring, an Italian automobile coachbuilder company, ceased his business in 1966, due to the substitution of the new automobile construction (van den Brink, n.d). On the other hand, the famous company, Apple, make its success by innovation. As we all know, Apple will release his new product or innovation of its existing products every year, and the big success of iphone, ipad and imac make Steven Jobs the most well-known famous entrepreneur. It is the same with Microsoft. Microsoft releases its new products every year. We all have noticed that every year we will update our system to the new window. The popularity of the system proves the success of Microsoft, and makes Bill Gates the famous entrepreneur.

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After all, the sense of innovation is not grown natural, it comes from opportunities. When there is problem, there is opportunities (Mariotti and Glakin, 2010). Several years ago, there is no softwares in the computer, and Bill Gates made his entrepreneurship from creating the first software, window. The Body Shop International, was created by Anita Roddick because ” she was tired of paying for unnecessary perfume and fancy packaging when she bought makeup” (Mariotti and Glackin, 2010). The problem that Anita faced made her start her own business to solve the problem. The problem finding quality is the quality that everyone were born with, and the opportunity is just coming from those problems.

The second quality of entrepreneurship is experience, which is exactly extracted from posteriority. About 60 percent of the entrepreneurial leaders are “transitioned”, and the number one ranking factor of success is the experience as the employee (Pinelli, 2001). People can learn terminologies and skills for business evoked as their language, and the procedures of running a business become his or her conditional reflex, which will make their future operating business effectively and efficiently. From the previous experience, the entrepreneur can easily tackle the key of a problem and forecasting the development of his or her business. Yu Min Hong, a great entrepreneur, started his tutoring school, New Oriental, after his experience of teaching and tutoring in Peking University. He extracted his way of teaching from his previous experience of teaching, and used the teaching method in his company. The big success of New Oriental make Yu Min Hong one of the greatest entrepreneurs in China, and his method of teaching spreads all over the country. The rules of business are simple, making a business plan, ordinating your customers, operating and developing the business. From your previous experience, you will have the blueprint of your business, and moreover, you have already have your customers when you start. Thus with your employment experience, you are actually jumping the first two steps, which are making a business plan and ordinating customers, and directly shortcut into the third step — operating and developing the business.

The third quality of entrepreneurship is knowledge, which is not inborn but acquired from education. ” And if experience is the best education, the classroom is not far behind. Higher education was ranked the number one factor by almost one-third of respondents, just behind employee experience” (Pinelli, 2001). Entrepreneurs are facing with various of challenges from finance, operation, organization, and laws. Operating the business requires you understand financial statements. Financial statements, consisting of income statement, cash flow statement and balance sheet, is a tool for entrepreneurs to track their operations (Mariotti and Glackin, 2010). The knowledge of financial statement is not acquired naturally, it is obtained from study. Not only the understanding of financial statement, but also the financial ratio analysis are needed as an entrepreneur. In order to cooperate with government, the entrepreneur needs to know the regulations such as taxes and franchising. The lack of finance knowledge may be fatal. The Native Americans sold their lands to a British hundreds years ago and they are excluded from their homeland by the foreigners, however, if they lent the lands with a low rate, they will still be able to buy it back today and even gained some returns from lending. Henry Ford surrendered most of his stocks for the demanded capital, and he spent even more years than he expected to receive money to buy back his stocks (Mariotti and Glackin, 2010). Some of the entrepreneurs even gain returns from investing using finance knowledge. Warren Buffet-“The Oracle of Omaha” , Peter Lynch-mutual fund manager, Benjamin Graham-“The Father of Value Investing”, give us vivid instances of making money just through their wisdom of investing strategy driven from their solid knowledge obtained in school (CapitalVia: Global Research Limited, n.d). The knowledge will drive the entrepreneurs make the right decision for their business and operate better.

The fourth quality of entrepreneur is a good sense of dealing with people, communication. People are not born with good communication since we all start from learning languages, but they can start learning communication skills at an early age. Communicating well means the entrepreneurs will get their potential customers and gained more customers from a fabulous customer service. Salespeople will probably become successful entrepreneurs since they will touch the customers directly and know their needs (Mariotti and Glackin, 2010). Great entrepreneurs in the U.S. Such as Ray Kroc –founder of McDonald, Aristotle Onassis, King C. Gillette, and W. Clement Stone, are started from sales (Mariotti and Glackin, 2010). They sensed people’s need and started their entrepreneurship. A good communication is prepared, not born, in order to sell your product. The entrepreneurs need to know their products, their business field, as well as their customers. Still, communication skills are built up from the accumulated experience. We learn communication skills through the relationships and the society of others. It is a connection between people, and the successful entrepreneurs will know the people’s pros and cons through communication, thus will determine their future path of the business.

Apart from innovation, experience, knowledge, and communication, qualities such as teamwork & leadership, integrity, and passion are also important (Pinelli, 2001). Teamwork and leadership is an essential ability that was gained from life, not born. It required the entrepreneur “address complex problems by utilizing strengths of different group members” and “create a synergy that increases innovation and successful outcomes” (Reimers and Williams, 2009). The team has a big impact on the business, so the entrepreneur need to organize his team well. It is the entrepreneur and leader’s task to “communicate and listen, ask questions and summarize, articulate a goal, and build members confidence” (Reimers and Williams, 2009). These tasks like communication are not born, however, they are trained through tasks and group projects. That’s why the business schools are teaching and training students the above skills. In addition to it, integrity, which leads to an honest business, is also a personal skill that were highly influenced from the living environment, not born. The business would not exist long if it cheated its customers. “Integrity is a deal-breaker” (Anderson, 2008). The entrepreneurs need to convince the clients to buy their product or invest their companies through the method of integrity, so that they will gain profit and get funding for their business. Passion, similar to ambition in entrepreneurship, makes your employment and business experience upgrade into entrepreneurship level (Kamai, 2011). Everyone have passion, and passion makes entrepreneurs start and grow their businesses. Passion is a personal quality that was acquired from experience. It is a kind of confidence of your business you alight with. Only when the entrepreneur targets his or her goal, will he or she have passion in the business. Thus, Teamwork & Leadership, integrity and passion are not made, but acquired after born.

Conclusion

In conclusion, there is many people become entrepreneurs. Famous entrepreneurs like Jobs Steve, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffet made their business enormous. These famous successful entrepreneurs are not athletes who were born with inherent body and muscles, but they are nurturally made and trained through the practice of their business. Entrepreneurs shared the same posterior qualities. A good sense of innovation will survive a business from a crisis and make it the leader of its field, and the entrepreneurs find opportunities from problems and make the innovations. Rich experience, ranking number one of the factor of entrepreneurship, will make the entrepreneurs easily overcome some business crisis and forecast its development. Well-rounded knowledge in the field, like the application of financial statements, knowing the government regulations is essential for the entrepreneurs to operate their business. Good communication skills, gained from experience of dealing with people, will get the business leader potential customers and gained a huge profit from it. In addition to all the above, teamwork and leadership, integrity, and passion are also keys to entrepreneurship which are acquired through training and practice. Moreover, these qualities are acquired, not born. One can achieve a good sense of entrepreneurship by tempered himself through practice and could gain the qualities in the tempering. Only by one’s effort to acquire and temper the qualities, will he or she become an entrepreneur.