Are Entrepreneurs Born or Made?

I am watching these ten great entrepreneurs from throughout Texas, and they have much in common, not just with one another, but with all the true entrepreneurs anywhere in the world. I wonder where these traits come from. Can entrepreneurs be made or are they just born that way. Here are three traits they have in common, you decide:

They cope with ambiguity well

They would have to as most of the economies are not growing, and lack specialized infrastructure and large amounts of high quality human capital.

Failure is not disgrace

In fact, great entrepreneurs see failure as the fastest way to learn, and they seek to fail faster than their competition, more frequently than their competition, and most important: they seek to fail originally, and never the same way twice.

They embrace the future

They do not revere the past, ‘the good old days.’ They are not event-driven, nor do they make excuses, point the finger, or wait for the government to be the master economic strategist and tell them what to do, or how they will be protected or subsidized. They are self determined, are shapers of the discourse,  and have placed the locus of responsibility for their own future, simply and squarely, on their own shoulders.

Are entrepreneurs born or made? The complicated answer is they are born with some pre-dispositions deeply embedded in their genome. They have a high threshold of intelligence, a function of the parents probably, and like to take rational risks which may be correlated with levels of dopamine in the brain; they integrate between abstract thinking and gut emotions very well, making decisions easily, and this may be due to the number of mirror neurons in their brain. They spontaneous trust which is dependent on the placement of certain receptors in the brain. Scientists will tell us more in the next few years.

But, sometimes, nature gives way to environment, and culture and education do have a positive impact on creating even more entrepreneurs. And the strongest possible impact culture can have on an individual is through role models, those who embody these values, and are unafraid to demonstrate them. And I am looking at ten of them right now.