Are entrepreneurs born or made? Are there any common traits shared by entrepreneurs?
I was talking to a friend, and was wondering if there was any clear answer to these questions (at least the second one, I’m quite convinced entrepreneurs can be made…). After a quick search on the Internet, I wasn’t too convinced with the answers: many articles mentioned that entrepreneurs need to be disciplined, confident, open minded, self starter, competitive, creative, etc, etc.
I’m sure that having all these qualities help for being an entrepreneur, on the other hand I know many people who lack some of these traits, and are entrepreneurs – and enjoy it.
I therefore decided to go to the source, and asked my fellow entrepreneurs the following question : “What is the single most important quality for an entrepreneur?”
You’ll see the answers below, but first, why don’t you have a try too?
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Was your answer the same as the 188 entrepreneurs who replied to the poll?
Very interestingly, these 188 entrepreneurs gave 90 different answers, from adaptability to tenacity, from ambition to vision. In other words, there was no clear consensus on the single most important quality for an entrepreneur.
Of course, out of these 90 answers, many would be synonym or have similar meanings. Using a very subjective approach (for example grouping persistence with perseverance, tenacity, determination, etc.), we find that 20% of the entrepreneurs surveyed think that persistence is the most important skill, with an additional 9% putting grit (i.e resilience) first.
Personally, I would have put adaptability as the most important quality for an entrepreneur, but I can clearly relate to persistence or grit also. I think the conclusion is that we had an enormous diversity of answers, and that shows that there is not a single unique model to be an entrepreneur – which is very good news indeed…
Thanks a million to the fellow entrepreneurs who replied – I can’t name every single one of them, but I encourage you to go and see their answers here and here.
Don’t hesitate to share with your friends, it would be interesting to see how other people reply to the survey.
And if anyone is interested in the Excel spreadsheet with all the replies, don’t hesitate to pm me.
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