One of the oldest debates in entrepreneurship is deceptively simple: what makes an entrepreneur? Is it an innate gift — a sixth sense for opportunity that some people are born with? Or is it a set of skills, behaviors, and mindsets that can be learned, developed, and refined through experience and education?
The answer, as with most important questions, is nuanced. Over the past century, six distinct schools of thought have emerged, each offering a different lens through which to understand the entrepreneurial individual.
School 1: The Superman School
The earliest conception cast the entrepreneur as an extraordinary individual — someone born with an almost supernatural ability to see opportunities, take risks, and create value where others see nothing. While inspiring, this view is ultimately limiting. It suggests entrepreneurship is reserved for a chosen few, contradicting the evidence that entrepreneurial skills can be cultivated. However, it captures something real: the role of intuition, vision, and courage in entrepreneurial success.
School 2: The Psychological Characteristics School
This school identifies specific psychological traits that distinguish entrepreneurs: high need for achievement (McClelland, 1961), internal locus of control, tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty, optimism and resilience, and self-efficacy (Bandura, 1977). Research by Korunka et al. (2010) confirmed that while no single trait predicts success, the combination of these characteristics creates a profile significantly more common among successful entrepreneurs.
School 3: The Classical School (Innovation)
For Joseph Schumpeter (1935), the entrepreneur is fundamentally an innovator — someone who introduces new combinations of factors of production: new products, new methods, new markets, new sources of supply, or new organizational structures. His concept of creative destruction — entrepreneurial innovation continuously disrupting existing industries — remains one of the most influential frameworks in economics. Companies like Tesla, Airbnb, and M-Pesa exemplify this approach.
School 4: The Management School
Bygrave (1994) defines the entrepreneur as the person who perceives an opportunity and creates an organization to pursue it. The emphasis is on management competence: developing business plans, evaluating opportunities, acquiring resources, and executing strategies. Stevenson and Gumpert (1985) drew a critical distinction: entrepreneurs are driven by opportunity with fast response times and staged resource commitment, while administrators are driven by resource control with deliberate responses and all-at-once investment.
School 5: The Leadership School
Proposed by Cunningham and Lischeron, this school sees the entrepreneur as fundamentally a leader — someone who guides people toward goals while supporting their personal development. The entrepreneur-as-leader must be a compelling communicator, skilled negotiator, builder of trust, and someone who inspires voluntary action. This reminds us that entrepreneurship is not solitary — the ability to attract and retain talent is often the difference between ventures that scale and those that stall.
School 6: The Intrapreneur School
Perhaps the most relevant school for today's economy, intrapreneurship describes the ability to act entrepreneurially within an existing organization. Burgelman (1983) argued it is essential for organizational renewal. The intrapreneur takes initiative, drives innovation, accepts risk, and creates new value — all within corporate constraints. In a world where companies face constant disruption, fostering intrapreneurial behavior is not a luxury but a survival strategy.
Born or Made?
The evidence overwhelmingly supports the conclusion that entrepreneurs are made, not born. While certain psychological predispositions may create a foundation, the skills, knowledge, and behaviors that drive success are developed through education, experience, mentorship, and deliberate practice. This is good news — it means entrepreneurship is not a genetic lottery but a discipline that can be studied, practiced, and mastered by anyone willing to put in the work.
Originally developed as part of an entrepreneurship training manual prepared for Anseye Pou Ayiti through PIGraN CSE (Centre de Services aux Entreprises), March 2023. Adapted and expanded for an international professional audience.
References
Bandura, A. (1977). Self-efficacy. Psychological Review, 84(2), 191-215. | Burgelman, R. A. (1983). Corporate entrepreneurship and strategic management. Management Science, 29(12), 1349-1364. | Bygrave, W. D. (1994). The Portable MBA in Entrepreneurship. Wiley. | Cunningham, J. B. and Lischeron, J. (1991). Defining entrepreneurship. Journal of Small Business Management, 29(1), 45-61. | Korunka, C. et al. (2010). Personal characteristics as predictors of business survival. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 83(4). | McClelland, D. C. (1961). The Achieving Society. Princeton. | Schumpeter, J. A. (1935). Theorie de l'evolution economique. | Stevenson, H. H. and Gumpert, D. E. (1985). The heart of entrepreneurship. Harvard Business Review, 63(2), 85-94.