Introduction
"Entrepreneurs are born not made"

There are two sides to every debate, and the "what makes an entrepreneur" argument has raged for decades with neither side able to conclusively prove their case. There are many who believe that an entrepreneur must possess personality traits such as vision, passion and drive that are innate and cannot be taught. Others argue that the skills of evaluating opportunities, motivating people and operating a business are easily passed on to eager students looking to be entrepreneurs. The truth is that both sides are right and it's time for a compromise: Entrepreneurs are born and made. Some people may be natural entrepreneurs and immediately open a business, others will have studied and
Respondents in a survey of 100 chief executives from entrepreneurial firms believed that "while personality traits are difficult to influence, the vast majority of knowledge required by entrepreneurs can be taught" (Hood and Young, 1993). Additional support for this view comes from a ten year (1985-1994) literature review of entrepreneurship and business education that showed "…most of the empirical studies surveyed indicated that entrepreneurship can be taught, or at least encouraged, by entrepreneurship education" (Gorman, Hanlon and King, 1997, p. 63). The fact that some of the same researchers may be involved in the teaching of entrepreneurship courses, finding that entrepreneurship cannot be taught would be put themselves and many of their colleagues out of a job. Nonetheless, there is an ever growing demand for books, courses, seminars and websites that will teach you how to "Be an Entrepreneur: The Six Secrets of Self Made Success"" or something similar. In fact a recent estimate suggests that entrepreneurship and small business education may be offered in as many as 1200 American post secondary institutions (Solomon, 2001). A search on Amazon.com (2008) for "entrepreneur" yields almost 6000 titles available for purchase and a similar search on google.com (2008) gives over 35 million results. Valid or not, this shows a wide spread belief that the skills and abilities needed to be an entrepreneur can be learned. What they are