Entrepreneur Are Born Not Made

I. Introduction:

There is no doubt that the entrepreneurs are among the most important resources of any economy since their talents help developing the steady and sustainable base for economy growth from wealth of businesses they drive. As a result of significance of entrepreneurs, many studies of entrepreneurship have been carried on to capture, analyze and explain the successes of famous entrepreneurs in expectation of producing relatively accurate formulation for developing more successful entrepreneurs in the next generation. However, many people believe that the knowledge of entrepreneurship can only enable people to realize and imagine how a good entrepreneur should be rather than educating any one to be entrepreneur because the successful ones must be born with certain innate traits. According to Zang (et.al, 2009), gene plays an undeniable role in shaping the personalities which more likely make better entrepreneur. Accordingly, it is concluded that the successes of entrepreneurs are basically determined since born. On the contrary, Klein (2010) claims that the any one with sufficient effort and proper methodology can learn to become successful entrepreneur. Thus, this writing aims to examine the essences of successful entrepreneurs based on various sources of ideas as well as real case of famous entrepreneurs to see if statement of "entrepreneurs are born, not made" is correct.

II. Critical analysis:

In an objective comparison, it could be seen that the arguments of side which supports the idea "entrepreneurs are born, not made" lacks of convincing. Firstly, the most common argument supporting "entrepreneurs are born, not made" is that the innate abilities contribute much to forming the entrepreneur and some abilities are unable to learn because they are simply determined by gene. Hambrick (2011, quoted by Pappas, 2011) back this argument up by saying that "memory capability and intelligences which are strongly controlled by genetics" limit the so-called "upper level of performance that a person can achieve". However, they are not everything that entrepreneurs need to achieve successes. In fact, experiences and knowledge are even more important because they can enable the entrepreneurs to not only activate talents in real circumstances but also sharpen those talents. Meanwhile, experience must be accumulated and developed during long working time rather than acquired at the beginning as intelligence. Hence, even talented entrepreneur must study much to collect enough experiences for any contingency during business operation. In the other words, it is reasonable to claim that the entrepreneurs needs time to perfect themselves and this is a long process rather than determined when born

Some supporters of statement "entrepreneurs are born, not made" argues that there are characteristics which are totally natural and normal people are unable to develop them as high as who already acquire. For instance, Zwilling (2011) states that there are 8 innate traits that make entrepreneurs successful which are positive believing, burning desire, unwavering commitment, power of persistence, hard working, acceptance of responsibility, pride of performance and enjoyment of work. However, such traits could never last forever because the talents which are not trained frequently in reality will soon disappear in the future. As a result, the talents must be able to aware of their gifted abilities to regularly sharpen them and apply properly in the business. Otherwise, they will be easily caught up by the normal people who are not gifted with talents but paying more endeavor on studying and experiencing. According to Smith (2011), the superior intelligence only helps the innate entrepreneurs to perceive and adopt