Where Do Entrepreneurs Come From - Leadership Lessons from The Dancing Guy

I've been reading a lot lately about where entrepreneurs come from.  It seems to be a popular subject among venture capitalists and entrepreneurship professors these days.  Are they made, or are they born?  My interest in the topic was inspired by a blog posting by Fred Wilson, a principal of Union Square Ventures, entitled, "Nature vs. Nurture and Entrepreneurship." Wilson, like many other VC's I've read, falls on the side of genetic predisposition.  To his credit, he does site contrasting opinion from Wharton Professor Raffi Amit, who contends, "there are no unique and defining characteristics of entrepreneurs."  Amit further believes "that you can, in fact, teach people to be entrepreneurs."

As in many other contexts, this nature versus nurture argument over entrepreneurship seems like an amazing over simplification of the subject.  Wilson and other VCs like to define entrepreneurs only as those tech visionaries who started selling lemonade at the end of their driveway and eventually blossomed to launch one product or service after another to legions of adoring disciples (I mean customers).  Professor Amit's position is an interesting one, but also seems too pedagogical a stance.  After all, if he didn't believe one could learn entrepreneurship, what's the point of being a tenured professor of the subject?

The reality of entrepreneurship is in the grey area between the two.  People become entrepreneurs when the serendipitous spark of an idea meets with the opportunity to capitalize on that idea.  Yes, many of them are MBAs who have been taught how to assess and build upon the spark, and many of them have been working for themselves ever since their neighborhood paper route.  I would wager, however, that most simply saw an opportunity to make some profit and went for it, learning what to do, and what not to do, by making mistakes along the way.  I speak from personal experience, that ticking all the boxes on the entrepreneurs personality tests, and having an MBA with emphasis on entrepreneurship will not guarantee the world will understand your vision, nor that you will avoid stepping on a few land-mines along the way.

The video presentation by Derek Shivers, "Leadership Lessons from Dancing Guy" raised a new angle to the debate.  (It's pretty funny, and only takes 90 seconds to watch).  Does it even matter who the "entrepreneur" is?  Is the important position the one occupied by the person trying to start, or by the first person to jump on board afterward, making it safe to join the charge?  Who was more important, Larry Page, Sergey Brin or one of the handful of innovative thinkers who joined them at the beginning?  Read "Googled," by Ken Auletta, and see what you think.  It certainly demystified the roll of the founder for me.  Maybe the VCs and Entrepreneurship Professors should spend some less time arguing about who gets credit for the start, and more time thinking about who builds the movement that turns into the business.