Nature or nurture? This eternal debate continues to shape behavioral sciences regarding how people develop their personalities. Interestingly, the question extends into the realm of entrepreneurship: are people simply pre-programmed to become business owners?
What the Entrepreneurship Statistics Reveal?
Let’s first take a look at the facts. According to a study performed by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, a leading non-profit entrepreneurial devoted to promoting entrepreneurship, almost half of all small business owners came from a family where a parent also started a small business. About 15% of entrepreneurs had a sibling who started a business before them.
With this information, one can conclude that a person is more likely to become an entrepreneur and start a small business if they had a family member who did the same.
Business Ownership: Nature or Nurture?
However, is the data conclusive to whether a person is programmed in their DNA to become an entrepreneur? Not really. Most likely people have a tendency to follow in a parent’s footsteps because they are trained to do so. A person who has a parent or sibling model of an entrepreneur has a much better chance to learn the ropes of starting and operating a small business, as well as the benefit of encouragement, coaching, and emotional and financial support.
However, though training and modeling support the ‘nurture’ theory, there are studies that show how a person can be predisposed to possessing entrepreneur traits. The Journal for Business Venturing is a scholarly publication that conducts studies that deepen the understanding of entrepreneurial phenomenon. An article published in 2008 concluded that inherited traits such as extroversion may, indeed, play a part in entrepreneurial endeavors. The authors concluded that there were high probabilities of inherited traits contributing to the propensity for entrepreneurial endeavors. In addition, these traits had little influence from the family upbringing or environment.
In answering the question regarding whether entrepreneurs are born, it is not entirely conclusive. However, it is obvious that a people with certain traits can become entrepreneurs more easily than people without those traits. In addition, families with supportive and modeling entrepreneurs can help develop other entrepreneurs within the family – which may be the catalyst behind the saying, “keeping it in the family.”
