University of Brighton
Course: Extended Masters’ Programme
Teacher: Dominic Ruiz
Date: 06/09/2012

Title: Explore the key characteristics of entrepreneurial people

Assignment name: Essay
Word count: 1668
EMA course: BM2
Student name:, Wei Che Hsu(Wei)
Student number: 12803274

Introduction

Entrepreneur is a symbolic of success for many students who study or have an interest in business. Business school lecturers always encourage and convince students that in the future they can become successful entrepreneurs if they devote themselves to academic education. This may suggest a relationship between entrepreneur and education training. However, not everyone can be entrepreneur. In this competitive and higher education society, there are always a few exceptional person who stand out to control and lead others. For example, the rate of population who have been higher educated (Institute of Higher Education) in Taiwan is almost 40 percent, but the number of Taiwanese entrepreneurs is only 5 percent (Ministry of Economic Affairs, R.O.C, 2012). The report shows, although Taiwan might have notable amount of nurtured people, there is still no obvious connection with entrepreneur who stand for achievement and competitiveness. Education might be one way to form people who have potential characteristics into entrepreneurs, but it may not be how an entrepreneurial people is created. The key to becoming a entrepreneur could be congenital rather than acquire. This project will mainly talk about whether entrepreneurs are born or made, nature or nurture. It will explain the definition of entrepreneur and central characteristics they have, and why it could not be trained; moreover, is it necessary for everyone passing through education process to turn into entrepreneurs. Finally, giving some successful examples to support the idea of entrepreneurs are born rather than made.

The definition of entrepreneur and the tasks entrepreneurs should be confronted with

Entrepreneur is a French word which applies to one starting a new project or trying a new opportunity, but there is no specific definition of entrepreneurs. According to Kirby claims (2002, p.10), "the problem of identification of an entrepreneur has been confounded by the fact that there is still no standard, universally accepted definition of entrepreneur ". In different generation have different explanations of entrepreneur. Because of entrepreneurs have to accept challenges which come from changing of time and external environments. In other words, the definition of entrepreneur to be subject to time and external environments (Kirby, 2002, p.11). The term of entrepreneur is regarded as an individual who takes on new business ventures and accepts business risks (Greene, 2004, p.4). Certainly, entrepreneurs need innovation to explore new business ventures or self-confidence to make risky decisions. Moreover, entrepreneurs use leading ability to control business developments and let intuition to set up enterprise policies. Which means entrepreneurs have central characteristics to motivate them to commit their jobs or find out undiscovered opportunities. The characteristics directly help entrepreneurs to face abrupt challenges and solve problems. The personal traits have great affects on entrepreneur which cannot be ignored, and that is also the main reason why entrepreneurs could be outstanding and successful in this competitive environment (Thompson, 2005, pp.244-250).

The reason why the characteristic is important

Entrepreneurs mostly have similar traits, such as self-confidence, sociability, motivation, flexibility, intuition, imagination and authority which influence entrepreneurs’ patterns of behavior (Kirby, 2002, p.109). First of all, self-confidence can help entrepreneurs face uncertainty. Additionally, Thompson (1999, cited in Paul Burns, 2007, p.37) stated "My mother gave me a massive self-belief. I will always try things - there is nothing to lose".