By Sambridhi Shrestha

There has been a debate about how an Entrepreneur is formed, is it the nature of that person or the nurture that the person receives… the debate still continues. Some say it is 80% nature and 20% nurture, some say it is 20% nature and 80% nurture and some are in the middle with a 50-50 contribution. There is no doubt that there are entrepreneurs that some have high influence on nature and some have high influence of nurture and then there are people who are 50-50 of both.

Nature Intensive
The idea delivers that entrepreneurs are born and the business acumen is passed on genetically to them. To explain it in layman’s terms an offspring born in a family that has a business background then that offspring be good in business or have a good idea of business. But does that always happen?

Nurture Intensive
This idea expresses that entrepreneurs are developed over time, experience and learning. The environment that a person lives in and the experiences that it faces forms an entrepreneur. But then even if a person is brought up in a business environment and has experience in business, what is the surety that that person will be a good entrepreneur?

It is still not clear as to what highly influences an entrepreneur but if you would ask me I would say, if you can balance both that is the greatest combination amongst all because it just can’t be just nature or nurture that gives birth to an entrepreneur. Even if its 20% nature or 20% nurture we require both, and they both have a role to play. Just for instance, the leadership skills, people skills, may get passed on but the intuitive judgments and decision-making skills may be developed over time and the past judgements that they have experienced. Or let’s just flip the situation and say that intuitive judgments and decision-making skills are passed on when a person is born but the leadership skills and people skills are learned along the time passes by and learned through experience. 

It depends on what an individual is born with because it’s not always that every person is born with the same skill set. Time is a good teacher it teaches us how to handle the situation and learn skills that an entrepreneur lacks, similarly experience helps a person to generalize the problem and learn to resolve it from past experiences. But then again it doesn’t mean that time and experience teaches everything or the inherited skills teaches everything otherwise, why would there be a delegation of authority, why would there be the demand of people who provide professional services such as advising, analyzing, forecasting in the market?  This sums up that even if an entrepreneur has balanced out nature and nurture there are skills beyond nature and nurture.

The debate continues as there are many contradictory arguments; no matter which side you are more inclined towards there is still a gap to be a perfect entrepreneur. Had there been no gap every new venture would have been a million-dollar company and every entrepreneur would have been a billionaire.