Entrepreneurs: born or made and if so, how?

By Alison Maitland  |   2008-6-23  |     NEWSPAPER EDITION

Illustration by Zhou Tao More in cartoon gallery

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ARE people born to be entrepreneurs, or can anyone learn how to set up and run a business?

The best-known entrepreneurs like Sir Richard Branson really stand out from the crowd - often outspoken and flamboyant, they are maverick adventurers, different from most mortals.

Can would-be entrepreneurs be taught the secrets of their success?

John Tate, a businessman, entrepreneur and visiting lecturer at Cass Business School in the City of London, says that "entrepreneurs are born rather than made."

But being born an entrepreneur does not necessarily lead to business success, he adds. "The passion, which is the first requirement for entrepreneurship, gets you out of bed. But you need a broad range of skills to run a business, and it's very expensive learning by your mistakes."

This is where teaching comes in. Tate, who lectures on MBA programs, says: "If MBA courses can give you the framework for how a business should be run and work through the different challenges, roles and responsibilities of an organization, that is hugely helpful."

He should know. Having spent the first 10 years of his career in industry, he cofounded a successful IT business, Tate Bramald, in 1989, which he sold in 2002.

Even with extensive management experience and an accountancy qualification, he admits, "When I started my first business, it took me the first year to realize how much I didn't know."

Tate is now managing director of ChangeBase, a start-up that has developed a software tool that helps companies to overcome compatibility problems in migrating to Microsoft Windows Vista.

He is one of many entrepreneurs who come to Cass to give students practical knowledge in addition to the theory they learn.

In his case, it is a two-way exchange: three groups of students have been working on different aspects of how ChangeBase could move to the next stage of growth.