Are Entrepreneurs Born or Made?

In the world of enterprise, there’s an ongoing discourse among the startup and academic communities over whether entrepreneurial marvels are born or whether they can be made.

Can creating and running a successful business be taught via higher education, or is a knack for enterprise an innate trait bestowed upon a select few?

Studies show individuals who choose entrepreneurship generally share certain personality traits, including extroversion and the propensity to take risks, according to a 2013 research paper published in the International Small Business Journal. This fuels the argument that a talent for business might be intrinsic in some people, but it does not provide viable proof that organizing and managing a business cannot be taught.

An increasing number of colleges and universities throughout the country, including Ivy League schools like Stanford and Harvard, now offer entrepreneurship degrees. The University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, however, has not followed suit, and that will not likely change anytime soon. 

There’s no doubt Northwest Arkansas is a hotbed for business. Three out of Arkansas’ six Fortune 500 companies — Wal-Mart Stores Inc. of Bentonville, Tyson Foods Inc. of Springdale and J.B. Hunt Transport Services Inc. of Lowell — are based in the region.

With such a high concentration of entrepreneurship in the area, one might think the addition of the UA offering an entrepreneurship major is the next logical step.

However, academic officials and local business innovators disagree.

 

Entrepreneurship Program

The UA currently offers entrepreneurship as a track of study under the business management major in the Sam M. Walton College of Business.

Two classes are specific to entrepreneurship students. The UA has offered these classes for about 20 years, but entrepreneurship has only been offered as a concentration of study for about the last 10, said Carol Reeves, associate vice provost for entrepreneurship in Walton College.

For the UA to create a major, the college would have to offer eight entrepreneurship-specific classes.

Although expanding the program is definitely something the administration will consider, creating a major is not on the list of priorities for Walton College, because there has not been much demand for it, said Alan Ellstrand, management department chair. There has been some growth in interest, but right now the entrepreneurship program has only about 100 participants.

The UA also has offered an MBA program for business starters since 2006. Run by Reeves, much of the program consists of entering national and international contests, at which UA students have earned a reputation for winning, according to several sources. These students can win cash prizes which can pay for their education or serve as seed money for a startup. 

Reeves said even those students who do not go on to own a business have used what they learned from the grad program by working in product development for companies like Unilever and Procter & Gamble.

This result might be more palatable to entrepreneurship education skeptics, who believe it comes secondary to having a marketable product, talent or idea of some kind.

“Every entrepreneur I know starts with some foundational skill:  technology, marketing, creative, finance, etc.,” said Michael Paladino, co-founder and chief technology officer at Bentonville-based digital agency RevUnit. “They have some aptitude in which they have a natural ability and have most likely honed that aptitude through education and/or work experience. That aptitude then becomes the basis for whatever entrepreneurial endeavor they take on.”

Joey Nelson, owner of BLKBXLabs, a Fayetteville-based digital agency, does not believe in “romanticizing” entrepreneurship, because it’s a lot of hard work. He says it’s important to pay due diligence in the field in which one wants to open a business.

“I’d rather have the education in the industry I’m trying to start my business in and just learn the other stuff along the way,” he said. “The more I learn about my industry, my business, my customers and their needs, the better I find I do.”

 

Experience as an Educator

Many entrepreneurs agree the best way to learn how to run a company is by working for one.

“If I were to look back at my career, I received a good foundation in technology at the UA,” Paladino said. “That foundation allowed me to get a good, traditional technology job at a good company that allowed me to grow that technology foundation.”

A degree in entrepreneurship might not have gotten him these jobs right out of college, he said, and it was through the process of working for a technology company that he gained insight into the ins and outs of running his own.

 “That background also helped me understand what type of company I wanted RevUnit to be,” he said.

Nelson has a similar story. Before starting BLKBXLabs, he was employed by Rogers digital ad agency Rockfish Interactive, where he watched a company of six staff members grow into an entity with 225 employees in five offices around the country.

“It was through this journey I learned the most about building and growing a company and thus had the itch to start my own,” Nelson said.

But Nelson contends it does help to have some guidance in running a business. Organizations like the NWA Entrepreneurship Alliance and programs like the ARK Challenge and NWA Startup Weekend help fill the educational gap. “There is always something to learn,” he said.

Others entrepreneurs, like NWA Startup Weekend winner Dennis Wemyss, take it a step further, adding a few business classes to his college curriculum in order to get vetted.

The win for his budding company, Exposure, thrust the young graphic designer into the startup world and now he said he wishes he had some general business and finance knowledge going in.

 

A Happy Medium

Other entrepreneurs agree that although it might not be the first priority, there is value in learning about business and appreciate programs promoting entrepreneurship.

“I think more of those types of supportive endeavors can help those students in traditional skills-based majors round out a bit more,” Paladino said.

The Walton College management department offers a way students can get both an education in a specific field and familiarity with business with its entrepreneurship certification program.

Even students outside of the Walton College can take 12 credit hours, including entrepreneurship classes, business ethics and one more business management class to receive a certificate in entrepreneurship.

Also, although the idea is in its early stages, the Walton College is looking into creating a school of entrepreneurship, Ellstrand said. It’s not certain how it will work and play into a degree program, but it is one of the key projects for the business college dean.

It will be a few years before a school is formed, Ellstrand said. “Changes like this don’t happen overnight.”

In addition to business and finance knowledge, any university entrepreneurship program will likely provide chances to network with successful entrepreneurs — the guest speakers brought in for classes, the industry connections of the professors and even the alumni who graduated from the school.

Since entrepreneurship programs are fairly new, it’s difficult to determine their influence. There are no statistics about success rates of alumni. However, entrepreneurs agree, the secret to creating a viable businesses, whether you participate in an educational program or not, is to have drive.

“The people who are out to go and get it are the ones doing it already,” Wemyss said. He points to prodigies like self-taught graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister and work-in-garage business owners like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.

“I love the self-propelled originality that we get when people take it on their own accord to get into the startup world,” Wemyss said.