Would look up in literature the issue of pull or push factors that effect a person in engaging in entrepreneurship. If you look up Global Entrepreneurship Monitor(GEM) reports, should be of help as their survey investigates this issue. I know South Africa was in it, unsure of Zim?. All the best

Je vous conseilles de voir le modèle de shapero et sockol 1982 pour avoir une réponse clair et net ; il explique comment il y a des facteurs qui précédent la création de l'entreprise, y on a des facteurs de faisabilité et désirabilité qui déterminent l'acte entrepreneurial

Leaders are made not born. Risk takers do not fear failure so they try new stuff. Successful business people have failed many times before they succeed. unfortunately formal education seems to beat the creativity and risk taking skills out of people. Sir Ken Robinson has written about this a lot. His book , Out of Our Minds for instance.

Culturally oppressive societies breed a populace that is afraid to take risk because outliers are exterminated. Free societies encourage risk taking and reward it. That is the essence of why free societies have a better GDP per capita.

This makes me think the issue is not genetic but falls in to the Nurture category.

I am mostly agree with Gregory Altson. I think it is about what we have learnt from our environment. Utility function and risk taking preferences are mostly acquired through our experiences.

The issue of nature or nurture is continuously under debate. Gregory, formal education does hinder creativity as well as oppressive societies in general, but now-a-days oppressed people who hold a cause are going for high risk, for them it is the same to be dead alive or dead dead!

Nurturing entrepreneurship is an ongoing exercise worldwide, there is a major move by large organizations within their corporate social responsibility practices is to fund and support training young entrepreneurs while still at secondary schools and this practice is also adopted by NGOs and universities. As you know global competitions are acting as flames to ignite that competitive entrepreneurship spirit in the young generation.

Natural entrepreneurs may take the opportunities as these present themselves especially if they have the seed funds. But today either natural or nurtured entrepreneurs compete for funds. Whoever, has the training to present a formal portfolio wins the bid.

Mendalin Genetics postulate that Phenotype is the interaction between Genetics and Environment. Therefore neither genetics nor context (circumstances), alone will make an entrepreneur. Sometimes genetic factors may dominant while other times context factors may dominant.

Explaining further, at birth entrepreneur comes with genotype inherent from parents. When growing, genetic factors/ inherent characteristics either enhanced or declined. Entrepreneurial behavior is the phenotype of the individual one may see him/she as an entrepreneur or non-entrepreneur. Therefore an individual to be bred as entrepreneur need some degree of genetic factors. Also individual born with genetic potential need an environment where he can express his potential. For example, If Bill Gate was born in Wyoming instead of New York (assumption) we will not be able to see Gate as of today.

Very recently, neuroscience is opening a new horizon toward nurturing leadership and other characteristics necessary for people to take risks or other unique characteristics by exploring chemicals and other neuro-related signals. Therefore, new areas of research to improve leadership and possibly entrepreneurial characteristics will be developed as we go in time. Summarizing, if a person is provided with certain chemicals (!) generated under observation that improves a person's characteristics, then nurturing unique characteristics is a possibility and therefore, leadership is incited scientifically.

If interested read more about neuro-leadership!

Of course some entrepreneurs are made and some are born. It becomes a problem if we say they are born for that will then nullify the role of education or entrepreneurship education. People can learn to be entrepreneurs, and they can acquire entrepreneurship skills. That will then mean that, even when one believes he /she was born an entrepreneur he/she will still need to acquire entrepreneurial skills.

A controversial issue. I read the following article a few months ago:

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/228273

On a lighter vein, Entrepreneurs have to be born and after BREAD_BUTTER_JAMMED. To me more than an entrepreneur or Business Owner - the entrepreneurial activity is the important one... the BUSINESS (WHAT?)... The closer the Business to the person makes it live long and the entrepreneur gets synonymous with its existence..

Hi Sibanda, in addition to the earlier comments referring you to neuroscience, I can suggest a paper by  Nicolaou, N., Shane, S., Cherkas, L., Hunkin, J., Spector, T. (2008). Is the Tendency to Engage in Entrepreneurship Genetic? Management Science, 54(1), 167-179. The study is based on 870 pairs of monozygotic and 857 pairs of dizygotic twins from the UK, who were raised in pretty much equivalent environments. The authors concluded that 48% of variance in the propensity to become self-employed was explained by genetic factors. Inna.

Interesting question Sithandekile. I would argue that entrepreneurs are made rather than born. Culture appears to play a very important role in this and of course it is something you learn from your surroundings. My interest is in explaining why immigrants in South Africa are more entrepreneurial than indigenous South Africans. I strongly suspect that the difference cannot be genetic. As you may know, the apparent entrepreneurial flair of the immigrants has generated a lot resentment from the locals and this has often been called xenophobia although I am not sure the two are the same. Anyone with literature that might be helpful, please assist.

The short answer is yes.

I believe all children are born with the desire to learn and try things. I also believe that traditional education beats the creativity and risk taking out of most people by the time they are 18.

Those that retain this spirit to task risks and see what happens have therefore learned to overcome the oppressive weight of naysayers and persevere despite these pressure to conform and do nothing original. So in that sense they have learned to succeed by ignoring the artificial limitations imposed on them.

In reality however anyone can also learn to stop using the fixed mindset and develop an entrepreneurial growth mindset as described by Carol Dweck of Stanford University.

Both of these are critical to establish the base for entrepreneurship, but the cultural and political situation affects whether individuals are more likely to attempt to become entrepreneurs.  Pearson - in the U.S. immigrants are also more likely to start their own businesses, but it has several aspects.  First, the genetics for being a risk-taker creates a situation where a person immigrates and is then more likely to also take a risk to start a new business.  Second, the culture of their 'new' home may not be comfortable them to fit into, so they create a business to create the environment they are more comfortable dealing with.  Also, a group of immigrants are more likely to support an entrepreneur who is 'familiar' and creating what helps them become more comfortable.  Greg's comments also shed light on the backlash mentioned in the indigenous population as they have been acculturated and educated to go along with what exists and not look for new opportunities.  Thus they do not step out, take risks, to create new businesses.

Thank you all for your valuable inputs. Robert you shed some light on something I did not even think of. If I understand you correctly, genetics may have a lot to do with an immigrant's decision in emigrate then? I had jus gone as far as suggesting that the people who leave their countries to settle in foreign lands are by nature risk-takers. You seem to take it further and suggest that what makes them risk-takers in the first instance is genetic? That is interesting indeed. Those that are genetically less inclined to taking risk then stay put in their countries. Is there any research to back this up?

I have also found literature that seems to suggest that innovation, access to funding, social networks and propensity for risk, among others, play a role in one's inclination to entrepreneurship. While I am not challenging this, my problem is that it lumps all of these factors together without showing which are necessary and sufficient. Could it be, for example, that propensity for risk-taking is probably the most important of the factors? Except for opportunity identification and risk propensity, all those other factors are likely to be found in equal measure amongst both immigrants and locals and thus would not explain the differences in levels of entrepreneurship.

Greg you make an important point  about what education does to entrepreneurship. It particularly attacks risk-taking by showing young people how much they would lose if their ventures were to fail. The opportunity cost is shown as being very high. It rather prepares young people for the safety of corporate jobs. It actually heightens the fear of failure.

Pearson - I will look up a few of the studies, but to start the paper (from the prestigious Nature publishing group) linked below shows three genes that are linked to risk taking behavior.  The first link will give you the full paper if you have an institutional account with ebsco, if not the second link will get you the article information.  Let me know if I can help you get the full article.

http://eds.a.ebscohost.com/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=30f1f4a6-458d-44d2-a254-e85b20b21c23%40sessionmgr4003&vid=0&hid=4205&preview=false

http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v8/n11/abs/nn1583.html

Thank you very much Robert. I was able to download the paper. Indeed it suggests a genetic link to risk-taking behavior. What that would mean then is that the three gens associated with risk-taking are found in equal measure amongst locals as well as amongst immigrants. The difference then would be that immigrants have preselected themselves and a greater proportion of them would have those genes than an equal number of locals. That, among other reasons, would help explain why they are more entrepreneurial. That is interesting indeed. Once we accept that, are we also then not accepting that risk-taking ranks highest amongst the factors that determine one's inclination towards entrepreneurship?

If you do come across more papers showing this link, I would greatly appreciate it if you again shared them with me. You have certainly got me thinking in a different direction. If we accept genetic disposition to risk-taking, then the question whether entrepreneurs are born or made becomes even more interesting. My guess would be that probably it is a combination of the two. I welcome further comments.

Pearson - here is another article that shows a high degree of heritability in risk taking.  These certainly do make us think, but we do need to remember that there are always multiple factors including genetics, educational, developmental, and cultural to name a few.  What we do not really understand is the interaction between these factors and how that could be used to increase society improving risk taking, and of course reduce negative types of risk taking.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/40506244?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents