

Are Entrepreneurs Born or Made? - obiefernandez
http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/21/literally-born-entrepreneurs

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pg
From what I've seen, some of each. Some people start with an advantage that,
whether or not it's inborn, is pretty well established by 18. But training and
encouragement seem to be able to multiply whatever level of ability people
start with.

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obiefernandez
I'm quite interested in how many of you (self-employed types) have parents
that were self-employed. My great grandad owned a tabacco factory in Cuba and
my grandfather was an entertainer and writer. My dad had a variety of
businesses from schlepping Encyclopedia Brittanica to real estate broker and
my mom owned/operated a bridal gown shop. None of my parent's ventures were
particularly succesful but they definitely had the drive.

~~~
mildavw
Self-employed: mother, father, both sisters, two uncles, aunt

Employed: aunt

Wow. I never tallied it up before! None of these I would consider especially
entrepreneurial, but rather they make a living doing things they're interested
in: photographer, horse trainer, marriage counselor, graphic artist, automated
machinery manufacturer owner (builds big robots). I like to design and build
software and that's what I employ myself doing. In my family, self-reliance
and keeping yourself happy/engaged in your work are the guiding principles.

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yannis
I very much doubt it. Trading which is the nearest to being an entrepreneur is
very recent possibly just around the time of the Phoenicians or a bit earlier.
Highly unlikely that this was adequate time for selective pressures to have
any real effect on the human genome. In addition most of the time most of the
profits from such trading went to the Kings and Nobles.

However, certain traits that define entrepreneurs are probably hereditary
(risk taking, opportunity seeking etc..)

~~~
xiaoma
[http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-
evolution11dec11,...](http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-
evolution11dec11,0,5882337.story)

 _"In the last 5,000 to 10,000 years, as agriculture was able to support
increasingly large societies, the rate of evolutionary change rose to more
than 100 times historical levels, the study concluded."_

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BRadmin
"The tendency to be an entrepreneur and personality traits of extraversion..."

Extraversion is highly correlated to entrepreneurship?

~~~
skmurphy
I think dyslexia is more strongly correlated to entrepreneurship: the
proportion of dyslexics who are entrepreneurs is higher than in the general
population, it's not clear that the proportion of extroverts is higher among
entrepreneurs, there are many introverted entrepreneurs.

Julie Logan has done two studies that demonstrate a correlation between
dyslexia (which is an inherited difference in brain structure) and
entrepreneurship:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/05/business/worldbusiness/05i...](http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/05/business/worldbusiness/05iht-
dyslexia.4.8602036.html)

[http://www.cass.city.ac.uk/media/stories/story_8_45816_44300...](http://www.cass.city.ac.uk/media/stories/story_8_45816_44300.html)

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johnm
Nuture nature.

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fnid
everything is heritable, including that which controls our responses to
nurture. Everything.

~~~
tokenadult
From a recently published research journal article announced on another thread
on HN:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=838534>

Johnson, W., Turkheimer, E., Gottesman, I., and Bouchard, T. (2009). Beyond
Heritability: Twin Studies in Behavioral Research. Current Directions in
Psychological Science, 18, 4. 217-220.

"Moreover, even highly heritable traits can be strongly manipulated by the
environment, so heritability has little if anything to do with
controllability. For example, height is on the order of 90% heritable, yet
North and South Koreans, who come from the same genetic background, presently
differ in average height by a full 6 inches (Pak, 2004; Schwekendiek, 2008)."

(Alas, now the pay wall workaround for that article is no longer available. I
have a complete copy of the article, obtained from one of the authors.) It is
generally true that nearly all human behavioral characteristics show greater
concordance among closely related individuals than among presumptively
unrelated individuals (which is what "heritability," a pre-Mendelian concept,
is about). This is not at all to say that young people couldn't be trained to
be entrepreneurs, and thus made rather than born.

~~~
fnid
I suspect the parents and the children are taller. I don't see how two
separate populations of people evolving different physical traits over time is
evidence that that height is not inherited. Your quote says, "Presently
differ." Three or four generations of people have been born since 1948 when
they split.

Furthermore, the ability for dna to selectively turn on or off particular
genes in response to environmental conditions is itself inherited from the
parents. I'm sure there were, in our past, some mutants who did not have the
ability to turn on or off genes and perhaps they died.

It's easier to train monkeys to fear a stick than to fear a flower. It's
because the genes allow it. Sticks look like snakes. If it's easier to learn
to fear a snake, the monkey survives longer.

~~~
tokenadult
_I don't see how two separate populations of people evolving different
physical traits over time is evidence that that height is not inherited._

The quotation is about expression of a trait (phenotype) and not about
genotype, and thus not about "evolving different physical traits." There is no
evidence that gene frequencies have changed at all in either place.

~~~
fnid
I'm still not convinced. If it's 90% heritable, then the average of the
shortest population needs only be 5' tall. That's pretty short. Nutrition
could account for the rest.

Yes, nutrition is environmental, but it doesn't change my original claim. Our
physical ability to respond to environmental changes is inherited. If you feed
someone who has inherited the genes from two 5' tall parents, I highly doubt
you could feed one twin better than the other and get a 6" difference in
height. You know by thinking about it that it won't happen.

Furthermore, 4 generations of offspring will lead to genetic differences in
the population. Foxes can be domesticated in 10 generations. That's a huge
divergence in phenotype.

