The personal paradigm approach to understanding the nature of entrepreneurs

How these paradigms contribute to opportunity discovery and exploitation.

1. Introduction: The Search for Common Entrepreneurial Traits

The exploitation of any opportunity through entrepreneurship unifies all personal energy, creativity, innovation, effort, skills, competencies, resources and networks into a single behavior. Researchers have tried to link this behavior with psychological traits and characteristics. Back in the 1960s researchers began looking into the concept that behavior was somehow related to a number of personality traits with the hope of answering questions like 'why do some people see opportunity, when others do not?',' is there any difference between people who are entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs?', and 'can a psychological profile be developed for entrepreneurs?', etc.

Over the years a large number of personality traits have been explored and reported upon. Early work by McClelland in the 1960s postulated that the key to entrepreneurial behavior was the need for achievement as a source of motivation. (1) According to McClelland people with a high need for achievement wanted to take responsibility for their decisions, set goals and accomplish them through their own effort. (2) They also desire some form of regular feedback. (3) High achievers wanted challenging tasks with concrete goals and succeed by their own efforts rather than by chance. (4) Based on the logic of the need for high achievement, people with this need would become entrepreneurs. (5) However the need for achievement is not an exclusive trait for entrepreneurs and it fails to predict entrepreneurial tendencies. (6)

Researchers turned their attention to the study of the locus of control. The locus of control generally refers to a person's perceptions of the outside world and the reasons they believe are the causes of events impacting on their lives. People who believe they can control the environment through their actions have what is called and internal locus of control. Whereas people who believe they have little control of the environment have what is called an external locus of control. Generally it was believed that people with an internal locus of control would gravitate towards being entrepreneurs and people with an external locus of control would be reluctant to become entrepreneurs. (7,8) Rotter hypothesized that people an internal locus of control would be more likely to strive for achievement than people with an external locus of control. (9) Although there was much research that supported these ideas, this was not a trait exclusive to entrepreneurs and was found in people of other professions. (10)

The propensity to take financial, family or career risks are often attributed to entrepreneurs. Thus it was assumed by researchers that entrepreneurs would take moderate risks in trying to satisfy their need for achievement, (11) and propensity to take risks would be higher than managers. Some research studies concluded that the propensity to take risks, among other personality characteristics was important in identifying entrepreneurial types. (12) However many other results have shown to the contrary. (13) Peter Drucker took the point of view that the entrepreneurs don't take risk, they actually try and minimize risks before acting and the entrepreneur as a risk taker is a myth. (14) Taking this view, entrepreneurs are capable risk managers who defuse risk through their knowledge and confidence of situations that others may view as high risk. (15) Other studies have shown that the amount of risk a person is willing to take is situational upon specific conditions, (16) and entrepreneurs don't take any more risks than managers. (17)

Research on specific psychological traits did not identify any typology type profiles of entrepreneurs or any exclusive traits that would lead to the prediction of entrepreneurs. Nor did trait studies give any insights into the belief systems or behavior patterns of entrepreneurs. Behavior is too complex a phenomenon with too many factors influencing how one perceives the world, feels emotionally and perceives their own self esteem for the trait approach to explain. (18) Any psychological profile would be too theoretical and too general to have any real meaning. For example, under the Myers-Briggs description of ENTP--(extrovert intuitive thinker and perceiver), a person would look for one exciting challenge after another. They would be highly inventive and their enthusiasm would lead to lots of different activities. Their inventiveness is attributable to their rich intuition which would give them a world of endless possibilities, when combined with their objective decision making facilities and directed outwardly converts everything to ideas and schemes. Such a horoscope like description really doesn't bring much deeper understanding of who is an entrepreneur and why they see opportunity, when others don't.

If one undertook several case studies of successful entrepreneurs and identified important traits that assisted in their respected successes, these traits would not necessarily be common to all cases. Therefore the study of psychological traits as a means to answer the question of 'why some people see opportunities and others don't', etc, should be widened to include other internal and external factors as well as situational circumstances. (19) For example, extroversion would be a much more important trait in a situation where an employee had direct contact with customers than in a position that dealt in paperwork. (20)

Each entrepreneur will have a number of positive and negative personality characteristics that will not direct behavior but be ancillary to behavior. Therefore as broad dispositions, these traits cannot be expected to be a very good predictor of individual behavior. (21) A person's general orientation, situation and personal motives also come to play in influencing behavior. (22) A list of some commonly mentioned traits are shown in Table 1.

Table 1. Some Commonly Mentioned Characteristics of Entrepreneurs

As can be seen from the list above, the traits themselves are very narrow and cannot on their own or combined predict who the entrepreneur really is and why they can see opportunities. Some traits maybe helpful in opportunity identification and venture creation but may tend to be destructive during growth and maturity stages of a business. For example, the need to control others will be very useful when the early stages of a new business must focus on production and sales. As the company grows and needs new opportunities and strategies to grow centralized control and decision making may stifle creativity and innovation within the firm. Another issue is that behavioral relationships between different traits can be totally unpredictable. For example, a self-centeredness will have influences on the locus of control, need for achievement and propensity to take risks in ways where behavior cannot be predicted, especially where situational aspects are varied between people.

Most traits also have opposites like independent-dependent, thorough-lax, sociable-unsociable, and responsible-irresponsible, etc. Many personality traits like the need for power, (23) recklessness, over confidence and unrealistic optimism, (24) and sociopathic tendencies, (25) can have very counter-productive results on behavior. As mentioned, the need for control can stifle creativity and innovation. A sense of distrust of others can bare many negative consequences on the firm and other individuals. (26) Osbourne postulated that the ownership of an enterprise itself can actually corrupt and change people for the worse. (27) People might not be driven by their traits but by their flaws, as flaws may be motivated as defense systems, like the need for power to cover up and suppress a lack of self esteem. For example, behind the need to achieve may be the fear of being found out. (28) People may work hard for success to compensate for failed (or failing) relationships and easily become obsessive.

2. The Entrepreneurial Opportunity Socio-psycho Phenomenon

Entrepreneurship is a process, so the search for entrepreneurial opportunity, subsequent strategy development and execution, has multidimensional factors influencing it. Without these other multidimensional factors, psychological characteristics will not drive these processes. Opportunity is a socio-psycho phenomenon and from this point of view, the potential factors that influence entrepreneurial behavior (29) are shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. The Potential Socio-psycho Factors that Influence Opportunity Discovery and Behavior

What factors, situations and emotions determine how people behave is so complex that no diagram or explanation can cover all behavioral contingencies. However for a person to start looking with intention at ideas that can turn into opportunities and be acted upon through a set of strategies requires a trigger situation. A trigger situation can be activated from an external event and/or internal consideration. External events could be shocks that may occur through sudden unemployment, being overlooked for promotion or some other personal tragedy that sets the process off. This may not be a sudden response to the tragedy, as alternative courses of action like looking for another job may precede the setting off of the situational trigger. For example, other internal triggers may occur when a person may be dissatisfied at work, feel they can do it better or have immense difficulties working under others. This internal 'cooking' of desire or frustration may take time and itself require some event in the workplace like being passed up for promotion or having a new ideas ignored to 'tip the balance'.

When an idea exists and there is a 'gap' between the present situation and the potential reality that the new idea could create, there is enough tension to activate the motivational trigger.

An opportunity is potential change and change needs energy to accomplish. Motivation is needed to trigger the process of seeing new realities that can replace the present situation. Motivation is also needed to act upon the vision of the new reality. Robert Fritz conceptualized the phenomena of 'structural tension', using an elastic band to demonstrate the concept and energy involved. (30) When an elastic band is between two fingers and the fingers are close together, there is little or no tension. However when the two fingers move apart, the tension on the elastic band increases. If one finger represents the current reality and the other finger represents a vision or potential reality, the tension of the elastic band can demonstrate the relational tension between the fingers at different distances. So if the elastic band is not stretched, no energy exists and nothing happens. If the present reality and vision or potential reality are far apart then there is great tension and potential energy ready for action.

According to Peter Senge, structural tension (21) also produces 'emotional tension' represented by anxiety, sadness, discouragement, hopelessness, or worry. These emotions can act counter to the structural tension, as these feelings discourage a person from taking action upon any vision. It all depends upon how people cope with emotional tension to determine whether action is taken or ideas just remain as passing daydreams. People cope differently to emotional tension--some people are better than others in handling negative emotions. Strategies to reduce emotional tension may include abandoning the vision or moving the vision closer to the present reality.

Motivation is both situational and relational. How we react to things always depends upon the situation and our relationship to others. According to Edgar Schein the human psych is not fixed as there are differences between people. (32) Money incentives may not motivate someone who already has a lot, and status may not matter if one sees themselves as already having a higher status that a proposed activity provides. Yet another person may see the same opportunity as a chance to make a living or gain some attention and notoriety. (33) Therefore a great determinant of what we do is learned from our social environment. This includes our family, education, socio-economic standing, culture, our own sets of beliefs and the circumstances of the immediate time and place we are present. Thus different people will have different patterns of motivation, attitudes, perception from different relative positions of status, need and wants.

An idea is needed to set off the situational trigger because without any idea there can be no opportunity alternatives available to the person to think about and act upon.

3. The Entrepreneur's Personal Paradigms

Acting as filters through our perception mechanisms are a group of attributes called personal paradigms. Personal paradigms act to pattern or filter information going into the psych where cognitive decision making processes take place. The author believes that it is these personal paradigms, which are particular attributes related to how opportunity is seen, appraised and acted upon, have great influence over our decision making and behavior. They are a buffer between our internal and external world where 'what we see', 'how we feel', and 'what we think', relates back to our personal paradigms. A brief description of some personal paradigms follows below;

* Alertness or entrepreneurial alertness is the ability to be sensitive to information about objects, incidents and patterns in the environment where ideas and potential opportunities can be constructed. (34) To perceive potential opportunities there must be a heightened perceptual and cognitive alertness. (35) Without alertness, any information will not gain any cognitive attention and be forgotten almost immediately. Alertness is a product of our psych and the environment. (36)

* Motives push people to perceive, think and act in specific ways that attempt to satisfy needs. (37) Motives often stay unconscious in a person, as the person doesn't know exactly what they want, yet these motives remain powerful influence behind thoughts, feelings and behaviors. (38) People differ in their types and strength of motives, taking them on different lifetime journeys with different outcomes. For example, Anita Roddick, the founder of The Body Shop may have been personally committed to the environment, education and social change, while Jack Welch and Bill Gates were more motivated by competition and winning, leading to completely different types of organizations and operational philosophies, while all being considered more than successful. Motivation is also situational where for example one can see the higher rates of entrepreneurship among migrant populations in developed countries. (39) Studying motives can assist in answering the question of 'why people do what they do?"

Motivation is not static. There are a number of levels of motivational factors, which are also related to our level of awareness and thus related to what types of opportunities we may see. (40) The first set that motivates a person initially usually involves need, responsibilities and obligations that may have arisen from some form of trauma like job retrenchment. A second set of motivators come into influence once a person has established something and involves motivational factors related to the tasks themselves. These higher order motivations have a lot to do with social acceptance, achievement, satisfaction, recognition and fulfillment. Motivational goals often keep moving as one progresses thus maintaining tension and drive in the person. For example, an original motivation may have been to serve a particular geographic area, but as time goes along, ambitions and motivations grow to new and larger areas. When one does meet a goal or objective, then that goal or objective ceases to be a motivator and complacency can set into the person. A list of common motivational factors is listed in Table 2.

Table 2. Some Common Motivational factors

Adapted from Murray, H. A. (1938). Explorations in Personality, New York, Oxford University Press.

Using the psychoanalysis metaphor, motivation appears to come from the ego portion of the psych. (42) The ego gives a person a sense of purpose and this is where 'the urge to make a difference', 'to be respected', 'to be admired', 'to be wealthy', 'to be successful', 'to control others' and 'to be the best originates'. The ego holds emotions of self esteem, the sense of achievement, envy, greed, hate, anger, anxiety, fear, guilt and empathy which are the building blocks of motivators.

4. Motivational Trigger

When an individual has some form of vision, tension begins to build up within his or her psych. The gap can create positive or negative feelings. When positive, a person will feel ambitious, energetic and ready for a challenge. When negative, a person will feel powerless, distraught, think negatively and may lack self esteem. A positive effect of the gap between a person's reality and vision is the creation of a source of psychic energy that will drive an individual's creative curiosity. This is the tension needed to help drive the creative process.

A gap based on delusion or fantasy about something that cannot be realistically achieved will usually result in a person having to self justify their personal failings. This may manifest itself in external blame or feelings of low self esteem and self efficacy. A person with no gap between their reality and vision will not have any feeling of need to be curious about anything and will have very little urge to think about new possibilities as they accept the way they are.

Tension built up in a person because of the gap between their personal reality and vision can be released in two ways. The first way is to achieve the vision thus closing the gap being the most desired solution. This release will take a period of time to bring reality in line with vision, providing a wide range of emotions during the journey which include a sense of challenge, excitement, and passion on one side and frustration, impatience and contemplation on the other side. The second way to reduce the tension is by lowering the vision, which leads to disappointment, low self esteem, anxiety, and a feeling of powerlessness. The vision may incrementally decline to repeated poor achievement within a domain that a person has a vision. This may result in the individual slowly lowering the expectation and explaining the failing away, i.e., coming 4th was good enough.

Tension created by the gap can create positive energy. The vision acts as a motivator, something that creates a frame of positive feelings which creates a good environment for creativity. However, deep within our psych, people have self doubts about being able to achieve their visions. There is a dormant belief that we are unable to fulfill our desires because as children we learn our self limitations. (43) This is important to our self preservation and ultimate survival that continues into our adult life. (44) Thus this leads to another deep unconscious assumption that we cannot always have what we want, which can create a deep inner feeling of worthlessness. So vision on one hand creating a feeling of challenge and excitement and a deep feeling of worthlessness on the other creates a paradox where our personal energies can be channeled in a number of ways. This paradox can lead to a loss of psychic energy where we decide to let the vision erode. Alternatively we may question whether we really want the vision and psychically manipulate ourselves into greater efforts to pursue it. Finally we may find (or sub-consciously create) obstacles as an excuse for our failure to meet the vision. Our deep assumption of self limitation may lead to a fear of failure, which in the extreme could lead to the avoidance of challenges. Alternatively this paradox may lead to total focus and dedication, where all obstacles can be overcome. Focus and lots of reserves of psychic energy can in the extreme lead to compulsive behavior, which may be good for achieving visions but have secondary costs associated with success like a neglected and failed personal life. (45)

When there is a strong belief that a vision can be achieved, psychic energy will increase as clarity and success reinforces the belief in successfully achieving the vision. The strength of the belief in success has more "gravity" than the person's deeply held assumptions of worthlessness. However when things don't go well and there is personal doubt about achieving the vision, psychic energy greatly decreases and the "gravity" of the deep assumption of worthlessness is stronger than that of the vision and pulls the person towards giving up. This is depicted in Figure 2.

* Prior knowledge is information and knowledge a person accumulates over a period of time. (46) Prior knowledge assists a person discover opportunities as it patterns incoming information with familiar knowledge already known. This recognizes the specific value of incoming information in the light of prior information. Shane postulates that a person will tend to discover only opportunities related to their own prior knowledge. (47) Thus people without specific prior information related to incoming information will not see the same opportunities as those that have. (48) As everybody's prior information has its own idiosyncrasies, each person will have their own unique 'knowledge corridor' that allows them to see certain types of opportunities but not others. (49)

In relation to opportunity, there are three dimensions of prior knowledge; 1. Prior knowledge of markets, 2. Prior knowledge of ways to serve markets, and 3. Prior knowledge of customer problems. (50) This can be further broken down two areas. The first is knowledge of special interests to a person, which can provide them with profound insights into their special interest areas. The second area is knowledge accumulated from their work experience over a number of years. (51) When information from the first area is mixed with information from the second area, new insights may be gained which lead to the discovery of unique opportunities. For example, a salesperson that goes yachting every weekend may discover unique business opportunities related to the leisure sailing industry through the mixing of both phases of his or her prior knowledge.

* The strategic outlook paradigm is concerned about vision, the ability to recognize and evaluate opportunities by turning them into mental scenarios, seeing the benefits, identifying the types and quantities of resources required and weight up all the issues in a strategic manner. A vision helps a person focus upon the types of opportunities suited to their disposition. This sense of vision is guided by their assumptions, beliefs and values within the psych. Vision has varying strengths in different people depending upon their ego characteristics and motivations. The ability to spot and evaluate opportunities is closely linked with a person's creativity paradigm, their propensity to action and their perceptions of their own talents and available skills. According to Bolton and Thompson (52) entrepreneurs spot particular opportunities and extrapolate potential achievable scenarios within the limits of their skills and ability to gather resources to exploit the opportunity. These extrapolations from opportunity to strategy require both visual/spatial and calculative thinking skills at a strategic rather than detailed level.

Adequate concentration is required in order to have a strategic outlook upon things. This requires focus in strategic thinking, creativity, ego values and interpersonal paradigms. Too little focus will result in random jumping from potential opportunity to opportunity without undertaking any diligent mental evaluations. Too much focus may result in narrow mindedness and even obsessive thinking which would result in either blindness to many potential opportunities or action without truly "objective" evaluation. Table 3 below shows the potential effects of focus on behavior.

Table 3. The Potential Effects of Focus on behavior

* The element of creativity expresses itself through other facets and talents. It is a competence that gives a person the ability to make connections between unrelated things, thus creating new ideas, concepts through what can be called an innovation. Creativity is the element that creates opportunity constructs from the fusion of external stimuli and internal information or prior knowledge of the person. Creativity develops innovation which becomes an element behind most opportunities, problem solving, combining resources, generally using talents and skills, and in overcoming barriers and obstacles. Motivation is required to drive creativity and focus maximizes the sensitivity of creativity.

* Propensity for action: In Tom Peters and Robert Waterman's seminal book In Search of Excellence, they listed 'a bias for action' as the first of their eight basic principles. 'A bias for action' is a preference for doing something rather than getting into the inertia of doing nothing. 53 Many people spot opportunities but for various reasons fail to do anything about them. The propensity for action is about energy, both cognitive and physical to act upon a perceived opportunity. Cognitive energy is required during the mental evaluation stage and physical energy is required to actually put strategies into effect. Without any propensity for action, no other personal paradigm will have any constructive effect.

* Personal talents are natural aptitudes, abilities, skills and intelligence to assist a person pursue their life goals according to their interests, motivations and contexts. (54) Talents according to Cattell are almost fully inherited. (55) Abilities are also aptitudes, skills and intelligence to enable someone to do physical or mental things, but are developed through lifetime learning. Talents and some abilities through learning can be developed into excellence. To utilize and enhance talents and abilities a person must have temperament, attitude, motivation, and interest. (56) Temperament encompasses the ability to manage talent and maintain perseverance. Many talented careers, particularly in sport and the performing arts fail because of the wrong attitudes and temperament. Personal talents and abilities link closely with the personal creativity paradigm and may act as both an anchor and a primer for creative action. Personal talents and abilities may also heighten patterning attention towards stimuli and information close to a person's span of talent and ability areas.

* The interpersonal paradigm will almost directly influence how large an opportunity a person may consider, dependent on their ability to communicate, collaborate, and work with others. Those with extrovert personalities and leadership qualities are able to bring others onboard and acquire talents and abilities they themselves lack. This means that a person can generally imagine larger potential opportunities because in their assumptions exists the possibility of building large organizations, than would be the case if they were considering or only comfortable working by themselves. How people view others is partly influenced by how they tend to view trust. Those people who tend to be trusting of others will tend to build organizations that may be more open for creativity and innovation than those that are built on assumptions of mistrust of people.

For the purpose of entrepreneurial behavior, the ego drives a person. This is especially so in the creativity, strategic outlook, motivation, alertness and propensity for action paradigms. A very weak ego would lead to a sense of apathy, where a strong ego would lead to a much stronger sense of self. Without a healthy ego, talents and abilities would be wasted. The ego provides our temperament and influences our basic assumptions, beliefs and values. On our external side, the ego along with the rest of the psych forms our personality traits. The world sees us through our personality traits and to a certain degree our traits along with our psych are precursors to our behavior. (57)

Bolton and Thompson describe the ego as having two parts. (58) The inner part of the ego is concerned about our internal manifestations of self assurance, dedication and motivation. The inner ego produces our interest and passion about things and is the psychic driver of a person. The facets of the outer ego are more behavioral and concern more about a person's outward qualities. These qualities include a person's sense of responsibility, accountability and courage. Courage is perhaps the element that makes one feel confident, face reality and stand up to their beliefs and values. The ego tends to be shaped by our self perceptions, experience and unconscious primitive drives and basic morality. Thus as briefly discussed earlier in this article, the ego will also contain a number of "negative" traits like greed and selfishness, that are also drivers and motivators to action.

Our perceptions, experience, prior knowledge and psych help shape "who I am" though a continual molding and shaping process. When set off by a trigger, our perceptions, psych, traits and skills combine to form ideas and some behavioral response, "what I do", which produces certain outcomes. As we produce outcomes, we measure them against our personal goals and go back through our perception system as feedback or 'how we feel".

5. Conclusion

The search for specific traits that can identify any potential entrepreneur has failed because a person reacts to the environment they are within and it is impossible to predict the behavior that will come from the combination of the personality and environment. Predicting behavior is difficult because all behavior is situational upon the environment. In other words, behavior is both personality and environmentally dependent.

Not only is behavior environmentally influenced, a person with a particular personality leaning will attempt to seek out or create an environment that is suitable to them. (59) For example, an introvert will seek a quiet, unobtrusive environment which is secluded and personal, where an extrovert will prefer a social environment with interpersonal interaction. Personal paradigms are not static, their will shift in their influence and dominance over times and according to life circumstances. (60)

Personality can act as a type of perception and memory filter. People tend to remember things that are compatible with their personality traits. Therefore a person with a calm and non-confronting disposition will remember events that promote these attributes, rather than conflicting and divisive situations. (61)

Opportunities and potential behaviors are just as much influenced by the environment as personality. And this is also contextual according to an individual's personal paradigms, and situation according to the motivational triggers existing within the environmental context. The thoughts, ideas, and actions of an entrepreneur are a product of both the psych and environment. The personal paradigm approach may be able to offer additional insights into the nature of an entrepreneur.

Journal of Self-Governance and Management Economics, 2013, 1 (3), 44-61

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NOTES AND REFERENCES

(1.) McClelland, D. C. (1961), The Achieving Society. Princeton, NJ: D. Van Nostrand.

(2.) McClelland, D. C. (1967), The Achieving Society. New York: Free Press.

(3.) Begly, T. M., and Boyd, D. P. (1987), "A Comparison of Entrepreneurs and Managers of Small Business Firms," Journal of Management 13(1): 99-108; Johnson, M. K., and Sherman, S. J. (1990), "Constructing and Reconstructing the Past and the Present," in Higgins, E. T. and Sorrentino, R. M. (eds.), Handbook of Motivational and Social Cognition: Foundations of Social Behavior. New York: Guilford Press, 482-526.

(4.) Chell, E., Haworth, J. M., and Brearley, S. (1991), The Entrepreneurial Personality: Concepts, Cases, and Categories. London: Routledge.

(5.) Smith-Hunter, A., Kapp, J., and Yonkers, V. (2003), "A Psychological Model of Entrepreneurial Behavior," Journal of Academy of Business and Economics 2(2): 180-192.

(6.) Sexton, D. L., and Bowman, N. (1985), "The Entrepreneur: A Capable Executive and More," Journal of Business Venturing 1(1): 129-140.

(7.) Chen, C. C., Greene, P., and Crick, A. (1998), "Does Entrepreneurial Self-efficacy Distinguish Entrepreneurs from Managers?," Journal of Business Venturing 13(4): 295-317; Sexton, D. L., and Smilor, R. W. (1986), The Art and Science of Entrepreneurship. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger Publishing Company.

(8.) However people with an internal locus of control may believe that fate and luck have a great influence in their lives and take action based on these beliefs. Likewise a person with a strong internal locus of control may undertake strategies that have little or no realistic chances of success due to overwhelming competition and other odds against success. Therefore locus of control cannot necessarily predict behavior and reactions of people.

(9.) Rotter, J. B. (1966), "Generalized Expectancies for Internal versus External Control of Reinforcements," Psychological Monographs 80, No. 609.

(10.) Hull, D., Bosley, J., and Udell, G. (1980), "Renewing the Hunt for the Heffalump: Identifying Potential Entrepreneurs by Personality Characteristics," Journal of Small Business 18(1): 11-18; Chen, C. C., Greene, P., and Crick, A. (1998), "Does Entrepreneurial Self-efficacy Distinguish Entrepreneurs from Managers?," Journal of Business Venturing 13(4): 295-317; Sexton, D. L., and Bowman, N. (1985), "The Entrepreneur."

(11.) Bowen, D. D., and Hisrich, R. D. (1986), "The Female Entrepreneur: A Career Development Perspective," Academy of Management Review 11(2): 393-407.

(12.) Hull, D., Bosley, J., and Udell, G. (1980), "Renewing the Hunt for the Heffalump."

(13.) Sexton, D. L., and Smilor, R. W. (1986), The Art and Science of Entrepreneurship. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger Publishing Company.

(14.) Drucker, P. F. (1986), Innovation and Entrepreneurship. New York: Harper Business.

(15.) Amit, R., Glostent, L., and Muller, E. (1993), "Challenges to Theory Development in Entrepreneurship Research," Journal of Management Studies 30(5): 815834.

(16.) Kent, C., Sexton, D., and Vesper, K. (1982), Encyclopedia of Entrepreneurship. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

(17.) Sexton, D. L., and Bowman-Upton, N. (1985), "The Entrepreneur: A Capable Executive and More," Journal of Business Venturing 1: 129-140.

(18.) There are in fact about 5000 traits that make up a person's personality. Not more than half a dozen of these traits have been examined about causality with entrepreneurship.

(19.) Gartner, W. B. (1988), "Who Is an Entrepreneur?" Is the Wrong Question," American Journal of Small Business 12(4): 11-32; Ardichvili, A., Cardozo, R., and Ray, S. (2003), "A Theory of Entrepreneurial Opportunity Identification and Development," Journal of Business Venturing 18: 105-123; Smith-Hunter, A., Kapp, J., and Yonkers, V. (2003), "A Psychological Model of Entrepreneurial Behavior," Journal of Academy of Business and Economics 2(2): 180-192.

(20.) Vinchur, A. J., Schippmann, J. S., Switzer III, F. S., and Roth, P. L. (1998), "A Meta-analytical View of Job Performance for Salespeople," Journal of Applied Psychology 84(4): 586-597.

(21.) Epstein, S., and O'Brien, E. J. (1985), "The Person-Situation Debate in Historical and Current Perspective," Psychological Bulletin 98(3): 532.

(22.) Shaver, K. G., and Scott, L. R. (1991), "Person, Process, Choice: The Psychology of New Venture Creation," Entrepreneurship, Theory and Practice 16(2): 23-45.

(23.) Peay, T. R., and Dyer, W. G. Jr. (1989), "Power Orientations of Entrepreneurs and Succession Planning," Journal of Small Business Planning January: 47-52.

(24.) Kidd, J. B., and Morgan, J. R. (1969), "A Predictive Information System for Management," Operational Research Quarterly June: 149-170; Laurie, L., and Whittaker, W. (1977), "Managerial Myopia: Self-serving biases in Organizational Planning," Journal of Applied Psychology April: 194-198.

(25.) Solomon, G. T., and Winslow, E. K. (1988), "Toward a Descriptive Profile of an Entrepreneur," Journal of Creative Behavior 22(1): 162-171.

(26.) Kets de Vries, M. F. R. (1985), "The Dark Side of Entrepreneurship," Harvard Business Review 63(6): 160-167.

(27.) Osbourne, M. (1991), "The Dark Side of the Entrepreneur," Long Range Planning 24(3): 26-31.

(28.) Kets de Vries, M. F. R. (1985), "The Dark Side of Entrepreneurship."

(29.) There is no agreed definition of entrepreneurship. For the purpose of these arguments we are interested in behavior towards exploiting opportunities through selected strategies.

(30.) See Robert Fritz's short clip at http://www.robert fritz.com/index.php? content=principals (accessed 1st December 2012).

(31.) Peter Senge calls structural tension, "creative tension." See: Senge, P. (2006), The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization. Rev. and updated edn. London: Random House, 140.

(32.) Schein, E. H. (1980), Organizational Psychology, 3rd edn. Englewood Cliffs: NJ: Prentice-Hall, 40.

(33.) For example, a student may be very happy to get a part-time job washing cars while studying. However upon graduation washing cars for a living would be very disappointing for him or her.

(34.) Kirzner, I. M. (1973), Competition and Entrepreneurship. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

(35.) Ray, S., and Cardozo, R. (1996), "Sensitivity and Creativity in Entrepreneurial Opportunity Recognition: A Framework for Empirical Investigation," paper presented to the 6th Global Entrepreneurship Research Conference, Imperial College London.

(36.) Shapero, A. (1975), "The Displaced, Uncomfortable Entrepreneur," Psychology Today 11(9): 83-88; Sathe, V. (1989), "Fostering Entrepreneurship in the Large Diversified Firm," Organizational Dynamics 18(1): 20-32; Hisrich, R. D. (1990), "Entrepreneurship/Intrapreneurship," American Psychologist 45(2): 209-222; Gaglio, C. M., and Taub, R. P. (1992), "Entrepreneurs and Opportunity Recognition," in Churchill, N. C., Birly, S. Bygrave, W., Muzyke, D., and Wetzel, W. E. (eds.), Frontiers of Entrepreneurship Research, 136-147.

(37.) Larsen, R. J., and Buss, D. M. (2005), Personality Psychology, 2nd edn. New York: McGraw-Hill, 339.

(38.) Barembaum, N. B., and Winter, D. G. (2003), "Personality," in Freedheim, D. K. (ed.), Handbook of Psychology: History of Psychology. New York: John Wiley, 177-203.

(39.) Kloosterman, R., and Rath, J. (eds.) (2003), Immigrant Entrepreneurs: Venturing Abroad in the Age of Globalization. New York: Berg.

(40.) Hunter, M. (2011), "Perpetual Self Conflict: Self Awareness as a Key to Our Ethical Drive, Personal Mastery, and Perceptions of Entrepreneurial Opportunities," Contemporary Readings in Law and Social Justice 3(2): 86-137.

(41.) Adapted from Murray, H. A. (1938), Explorations in Personality. New York: Oxford University Press.

(42.) Bolton, B., and Thompson, J. (2003), The Entrepreneur in Focus: Achieve Your Potential. London: Thomson, 78.

(43.) As a child we learn that we cannot jump off the roof and fly like a bird and cannot jump out of a moving car etc. The inner assumption of not being able to achieve our fantasies is a primal assumption designed to keep a person out of harm's way.

(44.) Fritz, R. (1989), The Path of Best Resistance: Learning to Be Creative in Your Own Life. New York: Fawcett Boulder.

(45.) This is something common in many great achievers in public life.

(46.) Von Hippel, E. (1994), "'Sticky Information' and the Locus of Problem Solving: Implications for Innovation," Management Science 40(4): 429-439.

(47.) Shane, S. (1999), "Prior Knowledge and the Discovery of Entrepreneurial Opportunities," Organizational Science 11(4): 448-469.

(48.) Kirzner, I. M. (1997), "Entrepreneurial Discovery and the Competitive Market Process: An Austrian Approach," Journal of Economic Literature 35: 60-85.

(49.) Hayek, F. (1945), "The Use of Knowledge in Society," American Economic Review 35(4): 519-530; Ronstadt, R. (1988), "The Corridor Principal," Journal of Business Venturing 1(3): 31-40.

(50.) Ardichvili, A., Cardozo, R., and Ray, S. (2003), "A Theory of Entrepreneurial Opportunity Identification and Development," Journal of Business Venturing 18: 105-123.

(51.) Sigrist, B. (1999), "Entrepreneurial Opportunity Recognition," paper presented to the Annual UIC/AMA Symposium at Marketing/Entrepreneurship Interface, Sofia-Antipolis.

(52.) Bolton, B., and Thompson, J. (2003), The Entrepreneur in Focus, 92-93.

(53.) Peters, T. J., and Waterman, R. H. (1982), In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America's Best-Run Companies. New York: Collins.

(54.) Moon, S. M. (2003), "Personal Talent," High Ability Studies 14(1): 5-21.

(55.) Cattell, R. B. (1966), The Scientific Analysis of Personality. Baltimore, MD: Penguin.

(56.) Allen, B. P. (2003), Personality Theories: Development, Growth and Diversity, 4th edn. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon, 388.

(57.) However as we have seen the relationship between our traits, psych and behavior is extremely complex.

(58.) Bolton, B., and Thompson, J. (2003), The Entrepreneur in Focus.

(59.) Scarr, S., and McCartney, K. (1983), "How Children Make Their Own Environments: A Theory of Genotype Environment Effects," Child Development 54: 424-435.

(60.) Mitchell, R. W. (1993), "Mental Models of Mirror-Self-Recognition: Two Theories," New Ideas in Psychology 3: 295-325.

(61.) Larsen, R. J., and Buss, D. M. (2005), Personality Psychology, 186.