"Are Entrepreneurs Born or Made?" is the most common question usually asked about and answered. But before jumping on to making an opinion and answering this question, lets have a look at what exactly an Entrepreneur is?
According to Wikipedia, "an entrepreneur is an individual who design, launches and organizes or operates a business".
According to Investopedia, "an entrepreneur is an individual who rather than working as an employee, founds and runs a small business, assuming all the risks and rewards of the business."
If we were to consider both the definitions conjointly, we can infer few common points on which both the definitions developed a consensus:
a) there is a person who initiates a business,
b) And there are risks and rewards for business.
We can safely assume in the light of these definitions that an entrepreneur is a person who undertakes the responsibilities of business(es) for given risks and rewards.
This definition is very generic and it does not answer the question "Are Entrepreneurs Born or Made?". My take on this is:
"An entrepreneur is a person who initiates a business to solve a social problem in favorably economic way". I does not mean NGOs' by the term 'social' in the definition.
Let me elaborate. By social problem, i mean an unnoticed problem that is persisted and faced in the society in general.
To support it, let's have a look at the example of AirBnB. Airbnb was formed when the founders were unable to pay rent or to afford it and they started sharing the rooms. They identify it as blessing in disguise and formed AirBnB which provide room rental services.
To name a few skills, we can say that people who are
are most likely to be entrepreneurs.
- creative,
- have a good knack for opportunities,
- can take initiatives, have the leading capabilities and
- understand the economic process
are most likely to be entrepreneurs.
These are the most common personalities traits found in entrepreneurs. Frankly speaking, there is no hard and fast rule for being an entrepreneur.
To sum up, the question is not entrepreneurs are born or made. They can be both born and made. Mr. Ratan Tata of Tata Group from India is an excellent example of born entrepreneur to suffice.
The real question is whether they can turn an ordinary business into enterprise or not? As mentioned by William Gartner and his colleagues (1988), that entrepreneurship should be seen as "series of activities culminating in the process of organizational
creation". The process of including personal actions that are oriented towards starting up an organization with the intention to solve a problem and hiring like-minded people to form a social group with a purpose.
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