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Characteristics of Successful Entrepreneurs: David, C. Mcclelland
Characteristics of Successful Entrepreneurs: David, C. Mcclelland
Characteristics of Successful Entrepreneurs: David, C. Mcclelland
McCLELLAND
Characteristics of Successful
Entrepreneurs *
Perseverance
Energy, diligence
Resourcefulness
Creativity
Foresight
Initiative
Versatility: Knowledge of Product and Market
Intelligence
Perceptiveness
It certainly seems reasonable to assume that successful
entrepreneurs would be more self-confident, energetic, crea-
tive and versatile than others, but as one reads over the list
of such desirable characteristics it seems just as reasonable
to assume that they would go with success in any line of work.
Aren't there some traits that are uniquely associated with
success in small business? And, surely not all of these charac-
teristics are needed for success. Otherwise, very few people
would be qualified for such a demanding occupation, and our
personal experience with successful entrepreneurs strongly
suggests that many of them do not possess in large measure
many of the 42 characteristics mentioned.
The fact is of course that there is very little empirical evi-
dence to support the contention that any of these traits are
more characteristic of successful than average entrepreneurs
or than non-entrepreneurs. The lists have been generated
simply by asking experts what traits, in their opinion, charac-
terize entrepreneurs or by asking entrepreneurs what is re-
sponsible for their success. Neither approach can give one
much confidence in the results obtained since no measures
of the traits in question are employed and since neither the
experts nor the entrepreneurs may know exactly what is reo
sponsible for small business success. In fact, reading the lists
suggests that they have simply fallen back on naming desirable
characteristics of all sorts.
In my work and in the work carried out later at McBer, the
emphasis has been on developing measures of some of these
traits and then testing to see if there is a factual basis for
asserting that anyone of them characterizes successful more
than average entrepreneurs. The approach is more elaborate
and has required much painstaking effort over the years, but in
the end its results are more believable than those arrived at
from armchair theorizing. Furthermore they provide a basis
for selecting those most likely to succeed as entrepreneurs,
and for designing training courses aimed at developing the
key competencies demonstrated to be needed for success.
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Characteristics of Successful Entrepreneurs
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PROACTIVITY
1. Initiative. Does things before being asked or
forced to by events.
2. Assertiveness. Confronts problems with others di-
rectly. Tells others what they have to do.
ACHIEVEMENT ORIENTATION
3. Sees and acts on Seizes unusual opportunities to start a
opportunities. new business, obtain financing; land,
work space, or assistance.
4. Efficiency Looks for or finds ways to do things
orientation. faster or at less cost
5. Concern for high States a desire to produce or sell a top
quality of work or better quality product or service.
6. Systematic Breaks a large task down into subtasks,
Planning. or subgoals, anticipates obstacles,
evaluates alternatives.
7. Monitoring. Develops or uses procedures to ensure
that work is completed or that work
meets standards of quality.
COMMITMENT TO OTHERS
8. Commitment to Makes a personal sacrifice or expends
work contract. extraordinary effort to complete a job,
pitches in with workers or works in their
place to get job done.
9. Recognizing the Acts to build rapport or friendly rela-
importance of tionships with customers, sees inter-
business personal relationships as a funda-
relationships. mental business resource, places
long-term good will over short-term
gain.
From Entrepreneurship and Small·Enterprise Deuelopment. second annual
report by McBer and Company to the United States Agency for International
Development. March 25.1986.
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The Journal of Creative Behavior
All that can be said is that the researchers had no bias for
or against particular competencies, that they tried hard to
develop reliable and valid codes for them, and that using this
methodology some competencies dearly were associated
with success and some were not. Furthermore, some theoreti-
cal explanations come readily to mind for the failure of some
competencies such as self-confidence and persistence to dis-
criminate between the superior and average performers.
Another potential limitation of the study lies in the fact that
McBer did not study any non-entrepreneurs. Thus, it is entirely
possible that all of the competencies in Table 2 might be
more characteristic of entrepreneurs than non-entrepreneurs.
Here we are talking about what McBer refers to as threshold
competencies.
For example, it may take a certain amount of self-confidence
to even consider becoming an entrepreneur, but not take
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Characteristics of Successful Entrepreneurs
neurs. That is, the more successful ones did not score signifi·
cantly higher on any of the 13 competencies measured in vari-
ous objective tests. This result was not unexpected, because
there have been many published and unpublished reports
of questionnaires and inventories which have similarly failed
to show significant differences between more and less success-
ful business people. The reason researchers keep trying to use
such instruments is obvious - they are so easy to score quickly
and do not require trained scorers. As in previous studies, the
measures we obtained from such tests simply were not valid
indicators of greater or lesser success in small business.
On the other hand, the interview data yielded somewhat
better results, that is probably because it elicited spontaneous
behavior from the entrepreneurs rather than relying on their
choices among preset answers. A theoretical explanation of the
importance of this distinction has been advanced by McClel-
land (1980). Of the nine core competencies for successful
entrepreneurship listed in Table 1, seven were assessed in the
second study of Malawi entrepreneurs. Five of the seven had
shown the largest differences in favor of more successful
entrepreneurs. The remaining two (Sees and Acts on Oppor-
tunities and Concern for high quality of work) had shown only
small differences in favor of the more successful entrepreneurs
in the first study.
Accordingly, it seems appropriate to examine whether over-
all scores on the following five competencies distinguish sig'
nificantly between more and less successful entrepreneurs
both in the first and second Malawi studies:
Initiative
Assertiveness
Efficiency orientation
Systematic planning
Commitment to work contract
The mean score on these five competencies for the success-
ful entrepreneurs in the first study was significantly higher than
for the average entrepreneurs, but to some extent that might
be due to a post hoc choice of the competencies showing the
largest differences between' the two groups. However, the
results from the second study are more believable because
they were predicted from the results of the first study. The
successful entrepreneurs in the second study scored 4.85
on these five competencies' as compared to 4.04 for the
average entrepreneurs, a difference which is significant at the
.05 level in the expected direction.
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The Journal of Creative Behalllor
David C. McClelland.
Address: Boston University, Graduate School, Center for Applied Social
Sciences, 195 Bay State Road. Boston, Massachusetts 02215.
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