The Great Person School of Thought of

Entrepreneurship
School of thought is the way of thinking about a subject matter and for a certain
subject matter there can be more than one school of though. Entrepreneurship is
defined as the process of making money, earning profits and increasing the wealth
while posing characteristics such as risk taking, management, leadership and
innovation. Many scholars have interpreted  Entrepreneurship in many ways
resulting in many schools of thought on Entrepreneurship. One such approach is
“The Great Person” School of thought.
“The Great Person” School of thought was originated during the period of 1200 –
1700 which lasted until the French Revolution. This is the most simplest and the
oldest thought on this literature. According to this school of thought the
Entrepreneurship is an in born talent which cannot be trained or learnt and
Entrepreneurs need good charisma to progress and be successful. Entrepreneurship
is seen as a “God Given Gift” where Entrepreneurs are born with skills as a result
of genes and groomed Entrepreneurs when the circumstances arise.

Main characteristics of “The Great Person” School of thought can be summarized as

follows:

 Entrepreneurs should possess good level of charisma to lead people.

 Entrepreneurs should possess some level of physical attraction (height and
weight) to attract people as the God Given Gift.
 Entrepreneurs have to be highly motivated and should be able to act as an
inspiration for other.
 Courage and gut feeling is a must.
 Entrepreneurs should be born with above mentioned characteristics and they
cannot be trained.
 The aim of Entrepreneurship should be to provide well being to the society
(create public goods to the society) rather than money making for personal
consumption (Benevolent Entrepreneurship)

Even though this approach seems too be simple and easy to understand, it is being
criticized on many grounds such as:

1. Entrepreneurship is a skill which can be taught and people can learn it.

2. No compelling characteristics are needed to be successful Entrepreneurs. In fact

there are many successful Entrepreneurs who has a less attractive
physical appearance.
3. The Entrepreneurship skills are not an inborn  skill but the environment in which
he/she operates can shape up their thoughts and values which makes him/her a
good Entrepreneur.

4. The motive for community development is not essential for an Entrepreneur. If he

is interested in community development and society’s well being he can start up an
organization for charity rather than being an Entrepreneur.

These days, the Great Man Theory of history is not taken very seriously by
professional historians. There is a greater recognition that all men (and women)
are the product of the societies and circumstances they were born in to. It may
be true that Churchill was a great man, and a great leader, but he was not
inherently so. There is no reason to believe that he was born with gifts and
talents that made his rise to prominence inevitable.

Plus, history is simply a lot more messy than Carlyle believed. There were
hundreds of factors that were all outside of any one person's control, but which
are no less important to determining the outcome. For instance developments in
technology (e.g. Radar, the Atom Bomb), economic power (e.g. America joining
the war) and natural factors (e.g. Russian winters) are all vital parts of the story
to explaining what happened.

To say that history is mostly shaped and explained by individual people is to

miss huge parts of the puzzle. There is no doubt that great leaders have existed
throughout history, but they can only act in the world as they find it and take
opportunities as they appear - neither of which are something any one person
can control.

The Great Man Theory of

Entrepreneurship
 It is quite easy to make a similar mistake when it comes thinking about the
success of companies. Why is Apple the most valuable company in the world?

If you believed in a 'Great Man Theory of Entrepreneurship', you would believe

that it is almost entirely due to the Great Men who were involved - Steve Jobs
and so on. On this view, successful companies become successful because they
are started by notable individuals who were born with the natural talents and
brilliant minds that inevitably bring great success.

They work harder, think more creatively and take more crazy risks than your
average joe. They probably flirt with the grey areas of the law, and generally
aren't afraid to do whatever it takes to succeed. This is the stereotype of an
entrepreneur that many people still take for granted. 

Of course, just as in history, the Great Man theory of entrepreneurship is not

true.

To be clear, denying the Great Man Theory does not mean claiming that there
have been no great historical leaders, or that these people don't deserve credit
for the roles they played. Jobs was a great leader and Apple simply would not
have become the success it was without him. But he was only one factor among
many, and we should be careful not to explain Apple's success simply by
pointing at Steve Jobs and saying, "There you have it!"

Consider some of the things that had to be the case in order for Apple to now be
the most valuable company in the world:

 Microsoft wins the PC wars and Apple nearly goes bankrupt. Without the
competition of desktop computers to focus their attention, Apple and Jobs were
free to innovate with the iPhone which is arguably the most influential and
profitable product of all time. Microsoft, on the other hand, is barely making an
impact in the smartphone market today.
 Steve Jobs was born in the geographical region that would shortly
afterwards become the global epicentre of a technology revolution. If Silicon
 Valley was based in New York, or a suburb of Moscow, does Steve Jobs' Apple
become the most valuable company in the world? There is a whole book's worth
of factors to explain why San Francisco became the most famous tech hub in the
world.
 Around the time that the iPod was first launched, music labels were so
terrified of online music piracy that they agreed to massive concessions during
the negotiations to have music in the iTunes store.

The world is a complex place, and everyone is born into a certain situation and is
given opportunities they can't control. A great leader seizes those opportunities
when they can, and works hard to achieve their goals, but it is clearly wrong to
believe in a 'Great Man Theory'. He was just one factor in an extremely complex
cocktail.