An entrepreneur is a person or an individual who creates a business that could either be

a big or a small business venture. He or she is an innovator with great business plans,
new ideas, and services. This helps in the development of a countries economy and also
providing employment opportunities. The three most important resources that an
entrepreneur requires is capital, land, and labor. Without these, he or she will not be able
to achieve their dream venture.

An entrepreneur has the ability and skills which can either lead him to the path of
success where he can rise to fame. They then look for further growth opportunities. It
can also lead to a failure where he will have to bear financial risks and also may become
less popular in the market. Having said this, the important and an age-old question that
arises is –

Are entrepreneurs born or made?

Are Entrepreneurs Born?

To some extent, there is truth in this statement that an entrepreneur is born. There are
two types of entrepreneurs born. First is the one who is born into a family that already
owns a business. The second type of entrepreneur is the one who has no resources and
no knowledge when it comes to investment, but he or she is full of ideas.

 It is not necessary that an entrepreneur’s son or daughter has to

become an entrepreneur. However, it becomes easy for an individual
who is born in a family that already runs a business venture to get into
the family business. It is because entrepreneurship runs in the family.
 Entrepreneurs require resources like capital, land, and labor. It is
usually not that difficult to achieve these since these resources are
already available in the family business.
 In such situations the drawback is that the entrepreneur born in a
business family shy’s away from starting their own business. He or she
focuses only on running the family business and to carry forward the
name attached to the business for generations to come.
Are Entrepreneurs Made?
Many such individuals shape themselves to own a business. Who dares to dream big,
and this is because they have a powerful burning desire to be self-employed. Such
individuals also go to any extent to take up risks.

 Yes, Entrepreneurs are made. These are individuals who are positive
and with powerful self-confidence. They want to be admired as a self-
made man or woman.
 Such individuals do not grow overnight, but they grow with time. It
could be a dream or a vision that they have always wanted to achieve
since their childhood.
 Over the years, they have successfully observed the surrounding
environment. Maneuvered through many obstacles and experiences in
life which has helped them to become an entrepreneur.
  It is their passion to create something new which makes them an
entrepreneur. It can also be said that an entrepreneur is created through
education. With the knowledge that he or she receives through lessons
which help the individual to be exposed to new ideas.
 Education helps individuals discover the skills and the natural talents
that they already possess. It helps them to successfully use those skills
in becoming an entrepreneur.
 However, there is one thing that education cannot teach, and that is to
take risks. A self-made entrepreneur can bear risks and take up new
challenges.
So as discussed in this article, we can conclude by saying that yes, an entrepreneur is
born by continuing the family business that he or she is born in. At the same time, we
can conclude that an entrepreneur is also made through education and the natural
talents and skills that he or she already possesses. However, there is a big difference in
just being an entrepreneur and being a successful entrepreneur.

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 Born or Made?

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.

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.