Yesterday, I gave a lecture to the second year MBA students at the Kemmy business school, University of Limerick as part of their module on Innovation and Entrepreneurship. The question I addressed was “Entrepreneurs - born or made ?” I shared my experience since leaving Dell. I also stressed in importance of building a quality network. I then gave my opinion on what Ireland needs to move forward. After the lecture we had a lengthy with the class around funding, generating ideas, the fear of starting up and the failure of “leadership” in this country to the Entrepreneur.
Here are the links as quoted in the lecture:
Here are the lecture slides:
Mark Cahill Mba Entrepreneurs Born Or Made
View more presentations from Consult Mark.
4 Responses
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Hi Mark and thanks for the notes. I love the topic because I tend to fall into the minority who believe that real entrepreneurs are indeed born not made. Unpopular I know but my experience continues to convince me of the validity. I’m now working with social entrepreneurs and the maxim continues to hold true. We’re running an EU project to promote and support SE’s and at the start the project team kept asking me how would they know if someone was a SE. I told them to trust and they would know when they met one. Now having met quite a few they know what I meant. Not that there are not fantastic business people or leaders, but an entrepreneur is different - so driven by the impulse, they more often do not even have the time to self-describe as one. But they leave a trail behind them that provides the proof. They are scarce and for that reason many people want to be called one, but my point is that there is nothing wrong with just being a great business person - actually it is probably more well-rounded! Love to hear other views.
Mark, one item I picked up from the powerpoint was “Networking”. As an Entrepreneur, I hve found networking to be valuable to my business. I joined two organised groups; called BNI and Skillnets. BNI is a serious commitment of attending one meeting a week while Skillnets offers excellent value in courses. I feel that any organisation who provide ‘training/advice’ for entrepreneur’s should include reference to networking.
Regards
Liam Higgins B.Sc
John,
In relation to “real entrepreneurs are indeed born not made”, I do think that these are rare in comparison to the rest of the population. These people are usually quite exceptional such as Richard Branson, Michael Dell, Bill Gates, Walt Disney, Henry Ford, Steve Jobs and so on. None of these finished a Third level education and some have little or no secondary education. I think education does enhance you probability of success, but it not essential for the select few that just “have it”. I do think (and I know I contradicting myself here) that education can also be a restrictor as it can remove that “impulse” which you describe.
By the way social entrepreneurs are special kind of Entrepreneur as they as less Ego-centric that some other type of entrepreneurs which I really admire.
Best of Luck with your project, please keep me informed as to how it progresses, do you have any links to the project?
Thanks so much for your input.
Regards,
Mark.
Entrepreneurs are born, not made.
My evidence for this is that there are some people who can never become entrepreneurs, nomatter the amount of encouragement you give them. They just don’t have the spark within them.
And there are no doubt hundreds of people who are born entrepreneurs but who never have to exercise the ‘gene’. They can excel in other careers too but there are circumstances which will force the use of the quality.
I think the entrepreneur ‘gene’ is more common than we think. But there is a function of environment to consider. My father was a serial entrepreneur but I never considered running my own business until I was forced to. I went for the education-academia-degree-job approach. In retrospect I’d have been happier following in my fathers footsteps.