The Entrepreneur in Economics

Current economic research denies the innate characteristics of the entrepreneur. Rather than attributing economic growth and innovation to personality traits, economists would rather advocate a form of economic determinism: if an aggressive personality dominated an industry, economists try to explain the characteristics of the industry that made aggression a successful strategy. Economic models are contrived to remove the personality from the entrepreneur, to make all entrepreneurial decisions predestined, given enough time. However, to deny Bill …

…level of entrepreneurial success in the first few months will depend on whether or not the entrepreneur possesses the decisiveness and open-mindedness to adapt business strategy to the prevailing market needs while at the same time monitoring his own ideas for validity and promoting his ideas as truth. The successful entrepreneur is an arbitrageur facing a “heads I win, tails I don’t lose much” scenario, and his success crucially depends on his personal characteristics.