Entrepreneurs – born or developed: does it matter?!
I’ve read with interest the debate over the last two weeks in the Sunday Times, “Entrepreneurs: born or made?”. The debate centres on whether people with entrepreneurial skills are born with those skills, or can they be ‘made’.
Entrepreneurs seem keen to preserve their exclusive status. They believe they have innate skills, attributes and even, what Ken Burgess (of Sportsunite) describes as, a “special spirit”. Their view is that no-one else can simply learn these skills. Others, such as Nadia Finer co- founder of ‘More to Life than Shoes’, insist entrepreneurs are made. Andrew Hirst, senior lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University perhaps takes a more balanced view: he is quoted (Sunday Times, 11/7/10) as believing, “entrepreneurs are both born and made”.
What we notice in the organisations we work with including, for example, the Boots Company and Edf energy, is that these companies are looking for people at all levels, and in all parts of the organisation, to come forward with ideas that will grow their businesses. They are looking to develop and support innovation, creativity, and entrepreneurial skills in order to grow and exploit their product and service offer for their customers.
On our ‘Unlocking your Creativity’, ‘Encouraging Innovation’, and ‘Strategic Awareness’ workshops we develop people to be entrepreneurs within their own organisations, i.e. to be what some commentators call ‘intrapreneurs’. The most successful organisations in the future will be those that recognise that the skills we might describe as ‘entrepreneurial’, are not the preserve of a few people who start up their own businesses. Rather these ‘intrapreneurial’ skills will need to be nurtured and developed by more people inside their organisations, in order for them to thrive and survive in the current economic climate.
For more details on our creativity, positive thinking, innovation and strategic awareness bite-size workshops, visit our website and contact us to discuss how we can tailor these workshops to your needs.