Are entrepreneurs born or made
Are entrepreneurs born or made? Discuss the merits, or lack thereof, of entrepreneurship development programs and critique an example of one in Kenya.
Are Entrepreneurs Born or Made?
Whether entrepreneurs are born or made is a question that has been analyzed and discussed by many scholars and has brought out different theories about the sophisticated matter. With the large explorative and vigorous debate, my stand point is that many or most entrepreneurs are both made and born. This paper tends to discuss the aunthencity of this stand and to further discuss and clarify the issue of the entrepreneurs being made or born. Let’s start by defining who entrepreneurs are.
Definition
So let’s start at the beginning. The word “entrepreneur” originated with the French word “entreprendre,” which means “to undertake.” The Merriam- Webster Dictionary defines an entrepreneur as one who organizes, manages, and assumes the risks of a business or enterprise. Joseph Schumpeter, a noted 20th.
Different scholars have come up with the true definition of the entrepreneurs but we will focus on a few of them.
Entrepreneurs are defined as innovative people who conceptualize new ideas and take risks to transform ideas into entrepreneurial opportunities so to accomplish extraordinary achievements (Hatten, 1997; Ho Holt, 1992).
An entrepreneur is anyone who identifies a business opportunity, screens the opportunity and gets the necessary resources to manage and start a business.
Entrepreneurship is, “…the process of creating something new with value by devoting the necessary time and effort, assuming the accompanying financial, psychic and social risks, and receiving the resulting rewards of monetary and personal satisfaction and independence (Hisrich & Peters, 1998, p.9)
Characteristics of an entrepreneur
According to (Kuratko 2009) the characteristics are:
• Internal locus of control
• Sense of humor
• Hardworking
• Risk taker
• Innovative
• Tolerance to failure among others.
The born aspect of the entrepreneurs.
Successful entrepreneurs are able to determines, screen and carefully exploit opportunities to make returns. (Bygrave and Hofer, 1991). In the context according to Kaish and Gilad this is unusually shared talent among few people as not everyone is able to discover and get the profits to the maximization, and this is because the core is the ability to notice and have innovative new opportunities. In hopes of evaluating what constitute entrepreneurs, it is pivotal to critically appraise the constituents of “entrepreneurial alertness” (Kirzner, 1973) as it is this which makes up the entrepreneurs’ intrinsic nature.
The assumption of that entrepreneurs are born is made by those who at first tried entrepreneurship and failed weirdly. This miserable nature made them loose hope in this venture and the fact that they lost everything made them make the assumption that they failed because they were not born to be entrepreneurs or there is no entrepreneurial background in their families. The founder of Facebook mark zucker berger was not born an entrepreneur he developed the skill as he found a gap min the social media world and took it.
Secondly, people with stronger personal traits, like smartness, body physique, faster and extra ordinary in thinking in the better than everybody else sense, they drive the sense that they are better than others even when they are not. Make them assume that they are born to become entrepreneurs.
People who have gone from having no money to becoming extremely rich like one is worthy billions of dollars and other people tell them how good and amazing they are gives them the pride and therefore believe that they are born perfect entrepreneurs which is a dangerous thing to do. This gives them the idea that they have the abilities and avenues to become super rich as entrepreneurs. Some people inherit their parent’s businesses and make addition profits for the companies tend to have this believe. For example, Keroche breweries owner’s kids are not entrepreneurs just because their parents own a successful business.
Let’s just imagine in every magazine or social media platform one is being told you’re the most beautiful/handsome guy or girl in the world, wouldn’t that mess with all your standards and believes like in how you walk, speak, think and dress. If millions of people around the world tell you that you’re amazing, what would happen to you? Would you develop an attitude?
So sometimes when these entrepreneurs become very wealthy and powerful, with a big house, big car, and a lot of influence on social media, they constantly hear how amazing they are. They can then think, “I am so amazing. Therefore, I am better than you.” So the thought becomes that entrepreneurs are special because they were born that way.
MADE ASPECT OF THE ENTREPRENUERS
People learn to become entrepreneurs in school’s life situations, hard work, creativity among others. The simple basic knowledge that people get in school helps them become entrepreneurs. Some use their hobby and talents to predominantly become entrepreneurs. There are more entrepreneurial people in the 21st century more than they was in the 20th century that mean the act of learning entrepreneurship is growing by day. Now let’s look at the other argument that says, anybody can be an entrepreneur. Social media and technological advancements in the world today has made it easier to start and operate a business either online or offline, even if your personality is introvert in nature and the skills of sales are not within you. Mark Zuckerberg is an introvert than is never interested in limelight and has designed a website worth $60 billion. It’s a global world so one does not even have to be in contact with people to make a product present it to people and make great sales as an entrepreneur. So I guess that means that we are in a position to argue that anyone can become an entrepreneur.
