The mass media nowadays is full of stories about people who founded their companies shortly after graduating from college, or invented the new products that change the landscape of the whole industry, such as Microsoft and Apple. These entrepreneurs do not have many work experience and strong social ties. This phoneme leads people wondering are these people born to be an Entrepreneur. Moreover, can entrepreneurship be taught?
From the genetics point of view, genes are found likely to play a role in the entrepreneurship (Nicolau et al., 2008). However, significant variation remains unexplained suggesting other factors playing a role in the decision to become an entrepreneur (Lindquist et al., 2015).
In the Nicolau et al. (2008), they gave three mechanisms to explain why genes are likely to play a role in the entrepreneurial entry. First of all, genes influence the chemical balance in the brain and the differences in comfortability in stress situations (Nicolau et al., 2008). Second, gene-environment correlation affects the individual's selection of the environment to affiliate oneself with, such as the educational choice and job preference (Nicolau et al., 2008). Finally, a gene-environment interaction which means individual traits makes individuals more receptive to environmental stimuli or changes (Nicolau et al. 2008).
From this study, the conclusion could be drawn that there is a part of entrepreneurship can be attributed to genetics and the major driver of entrepreneurship is non-shared factors and measurement errors (Nicolau et al. 2008). Therefore, entrepreneurship is clearly not genetically determined since there are substantial context effects. More on this topic may be should focus on the interactions between genes and environment (Quaye et al., 2012). From the study of twins, Zunino (2014) found that the moderating effect of the environment on the genes. Environment plays a critical part to predict the entrepreneurial entry.
The genetic type of study could also link to the role modeling of the parents. More on this topic will discuss in the later part.