0363-9428/88i 1 24$1 .50Copyright 1988 by theUniversity of Balt imoreEducational Foundation

a' ((Who Is anEntrepreneur?" Is theWrong QuestionWil l iam B. Gartner

Entrepreneurship is the creation of organizations. What dlfterentiates entrepreneurstrom non-entrepreneurs ls that entrepreneuns create organizations, whil-e.non-entre-preneurs dc not. In behavioral approaches to the study of entrepreneurship an entrepreneur is seen as a set of activlties involved in organization creation, while in traltapproaches an entrepreneur ls a set of personality traits and characteristics. Thisgager argues that tralt approaches have been unfrultful and that behavioral approaches will be a more productive perspective for future'research in entrepreneur-ship. r

My own personal experience was that for ten years we ran a research centerin entrepreneurial history; for ten ye:trs we tried to define the entrepreneur.We nevlr succeeded.iEicn of us

-had some notion of it-what he thought

was, for his purposes, a Geful definition. And I don't think you're going toget farther than that. (Cole, 1969, p. 17)

How can we know the dancer from the dance? (Yeats, 1956)

Arthur Cole's words have taken on the deeper tones of prophecy. Recent re-views of the entrepreneurship literature have found few changes in this dilemmain the sixteen years since Cole's statement. Brockhuas and Horwiu's (1985)review of-tie psychotogy of the entrepreneur concluded that "The literature ap-pears to support the argument that there is no generic definition of the entrepre-neur, or if there is we do not have the psychological instruments to discover it atthis time. Most of the attempts to distinguish between enrrepreneurs and smallbusiness owners or managers have discovered no significant differcntiating fea-tures." (pp. 4243) Other scholars have concurred that a common definition ofthe entrepreneur remains elusive (Carsrud, Olm and Edy, 1985; Sexton andSmilor, 1985; Wortman, 1985).

Cole's early doubts about whether the entreprcneur could be defined have notstopped researchers from attempting to do so. Much rcsearch in the entrepreneur-ship field has focused on the person of the entrepreneur, asking the question,Why do certain individuals start firms when others, under similar conditions, donot? Asking why has led us to answering with who: Why did X start a venture?Because X has a certain inner quality or qualities. This focus can be identified inany research which seeks to identify traits that differentiate entrepreneurs fromnon-entrepreneurs: need for achievement (Komives, 1972; McClelland, 1961;McClelland and Winter, 1969), locus of control (Brockhaus, 1980a; Brockhaus

fummer, 1989

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and Nord, 1979: Hul l . Bosley, and Udel l , 1982; Li les. 1974\. r isk taking(Brockhaus, 1980b: Hull. Bosley, and Udell, 1982; Liles, 1974; Mancuso. 1975:Palmer, l97ll, values (DeCarlo and Lyons, 1979: Hornaday and Aboud. l97l;Hull, Bosley, and Udell, 1980; Komives. 1972), age (Cooper. 1973; Howell,1972: Mayer and Goldstein, 196l) are but a few examples. X starts a venturebecause of qualities that made X who (s)he is. Entrepreneurship research haslong asked, "Who is an entrepreneur?"

I believe the attempt to answer the question "Who is an entrepreneur?,"which focusses on the traits and personality characteristics of entrepreneurs, willneither lead us to a definition of the entrepreneur nor help us to understand thephenomenon of entrepreneurship. This search for characteristics and traits of theentrepreneur is labeled in this article as the trait approach. In this approach theentrepreneur is the basic unit of analysis and the entrepreneur's traits and charac-teristics are the key to explaining entrepreneurship as a phenomenon, since theentrepreneur "causes" entrepreneurship. The purpose of the frst part of thisarticle is to look at research based on the trait view of entrepreneurship and toshow that this view alone is inadequate to explain the phenomenon of entrepre-neurship. Another approach is needed to help us refocus our thoughts on entre-preneurship. That approach-the behavioral approach-will be presented andthe two approaches will be compared and contrasted.

THE TRAIT APPROACHln the_ trait approach the entrepreneur is assumed to be a particular personality

type, a fixed state of existence, a describable species that one might find a pictureof in a field guide, and the point of much entrepreneurship research has been toenumerate a set of characteristics describing this entity known as the entrepre-neur. One indication of the tenacity of this point of view-i.e., once an entrepre-n9ur, always an entrepreneur, since an entrepreneur is a personality type, a stateof being that doesn't go away-can be seen in the selection of samplis of "en-

trepreneurs" in many well-regarded research studies (Table l). In many studies"enE€preneurs" are sampled many years after having started their firms. Horn-aday and Aboud (1971), for example, chose to study individuals who headedneurs" were interviewed anywhere from two to sixteen years after startup. Is theowner/manager_o!-an ongoing firm two or ten or even fifteen years aftei startupan entrepreneur? If this individual is included in a sample of entrepreneurs, whatdoes that imply about the researcher's definition of the entrepreneur, and whatwill the resulting data reflect?

Table I is an attempt to organize concisely much of the major literanure on theentrepreneur and entrePreneurship. It represents a succumbing to the grand temp-tation that haunts many writers and researchers in the entrepreneurship field: ifwe could just systematically go back and extract, categorize, and organize whathas already been discovered about the ennepreneur, we will return with thepieces of a puzzle which we can then fit together into the big picture, and theentrepreneur will aPPear defined on the page. Table I is most emphatically northe big picture. lnstead Table I shows:

.. ( l) that many (and often vague) definitions of the entrepreneur have been used

(in many studies the entrepreneur is never defined);

4 EX.ITRPRENEURSHIP IHEOfTY ond PRACICE

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(2) there are few studies that employ the same definition:(3) that lack of basic agreement is to "who an entrepreneur is" has led to the

selecdon of sampres of "int .p..neurs" that are hardly homogeneous. This lack

of homogeneity occurs not ooiy among the various samples listed, but actually

wtthin si-ngle samples. Formany of thi samples it could be said that variation

withinthe sample is more signihcant, i.e., ii could tell us more than variation

between the sample and the general population'(4) rhat a srartiing numbeiof traitl and characteristics have been anributed to

the entrepreneur, "iO u "psychological profile" of the entrepreneur assembled

from theie studies would po*y someonb larger than.life, full of contradicdons,

and, conversely, ,orn.oni so fuU of traits thit (s)he would have to be a sort of

generic "Everyman. "

BEHAVIORAL AND TRATT.APPROACH ESTO ENTREPRENEURSHIP

I rhink the study of the entrepreneur is actually on€ step removed from the

primary phenomenon of entteprineurship-the creation of organizatigry'i'

;;;; by which new organizitions come into existence (Vesper, 1982). This'Uetrauiorat

approach viewJ the creation of an organization as.a contextual event,

the outco*.'of many influences. The entrepreneur is part of the complex process

of new venrur€ .r."iion. This approach to the study of entrepreneurshiP tr€ats the

organization as the primary levif of analysis and the individual is viewed in terms

oiactivities undertaken to enable the organization to come into existence(Gartner, l9g5). The personality characterisiics of the entrepreneur are ancillary

to the entrepreneur's'behaviors. Research on the enuepreneur should focus on

what the entrePreneur dotis and not who the entrepreneur is.This behavioral view of entrepreneurship is not new. Many authors have asked

as their primary question, "How does an organization come into existence?"(Herbert'& Link,'1982; Shapero & Sokol, 1982). Arthur Cole, for example,

raking a behavioral viewpoint, quoted Say (1816) and defined the entrePreneur as

an economic agent who:

unites all means of production-the labor of the one, the capital or the -l*d"i,tt"ttners-and *tto finds in the value of the products which result from

rheir employment the reconstitution of the entire capital that he utilizes, and

the value of tn. wages, the interest, and the rent which he pays, as well as the

profits belonging to himself. (Cole, 1946, p. 3)

This view places the entrepreneur within the process of new venture creation,

pcrforming a series of actions that result in the creation of an organization. t1o*-

lu"r, after-setting our admirably to define the entrcpreneur according to a behav-

ioral orientationlcot. immediitely falls back to the "who is an entrePreneur"

approach, and we are once more with traits and characteristics:

Thisperson,thisentrePreneur,musthavespecialpersonaIquaIit ies��(frornsry) judgement, perseverance, and a knowledge of the world as well

as of business. (p. 3, emphasis added)

Summer, 1989 57

Although the behavioral view of entrepreneurship is not ne\r,. it seems that ithas always been a dif f icult view to maintain (Peterson, l98l). As we have seen.the entrepreneur has long seemed to many researchers to be a special personwhose qualities need to be investigated. In 1980 Van de Ven issued a warning toentrepreneurship researchers not to be tempted into studies of traits and charac-teristics:

Researchers wedded to the conception of entrepreneurship for studying thecreation of organizations can learn much from the history of research onleadership. Like the studies of entrepreneurship, this research began by in-vestigating the traits and personality characteristics of leaders. However, noempirical evidence was found to support the expectation that there are a finitenumber of characteristics or traits of leaders and that these traits differentiatesuccessful from unsuccessful leaders. More recently, research into leadershiphas apparently made some progress by focusing on the behavior of leaders(that is, on what they do instead of what they are) and by determining whatsituational factors or conditions moderate the effects of their behavior andperformance. (p. 86)

Jenks (1950) and Kilby (1971) have also strongly criticized research which seeksto develop personality profiles of the entrepreneur; both have encouraged re-searchers to study the behaviors and activities of entrepreneurs. In empirical re-search (Brockhaus, 1980; Brockhaus & Nord, 1979: Sexton & Kent, l98l) havefound that when certain psychological traits are carefully evaluated, it is notpossible to differentiate entrepreneurs from managers or from the general popula-tion based on the entrepreneur's supposed possession of such traits.

The trait approach to entrepreneurship research is understandably persistent.Entrepreneurs often do seem like special people who achieve things that most ofus do not achieve. These achievements, we think, must be based on some specialinner qualiry. It is difficult not to thir* this way. But let us rry to srep outside thisway of thinking. We can illustrate this point with a srory. What if the UnitedStates suddenly found itself unable to field a team of baseball players that couldwin in world competition? One response to such a problem might be to do re-search on baseball players to learn "Who is a baseball player?," so that indi-viduals with baseball playing propensity could be selected from the population.Such studies might determine that, on average, baseball players weigh 185pounds. are six feet tall, and most of them can bench press over 250 pounds. Wecould probably develop a very good personality profile of the baseball player.Based on upbringing and experience we could document a baseball player's locusof control, need for achievement, tolerance of ambiguity, and other character-istics that we thought must make for good baseball playing. We could then re-cruit individuals with this set of characteristics and feel confident once again inour comP€titive edge. Yet, this type of research simply ignores the obvious-that is, the baseball player, in fact, plays baseball. Baseball involves a set ofbehaviors-running, pitching, throwing, catching, hitting, sliding, etc.-thatbaseball players exhibit. To be a baseball player means that an individual isbehaving as a baseball player. A baseball player is not somerhing one is, it issomething one does, and the dehnition of a baseball player cannot stray far fromthis obvious fact without getring into difficulty.

58 ENTRPRENET,RSHIP THEOI?Y ond PRACTICE

This might be said about any occupation-manager. welder. doctor. butcher.How can we know the baseball player from the game? How can we know theenrepreneur from starting an organization?

While this baseball metaghor might help to make the difference between be-havioral and trait viewpoints very clear and keep it clear, this clarity is not soeasily achieved in real life empirical research. and researchers' viewpoints be-come cloudy and out of focus. Behavioral and trait issues merge and conclusions:ue vague and don't really tell us anything.

AN EXAMPLE OF THE TRAIT VIEWPOINIAn article by Carland, Hoy, Boulton and Carland (1984). "Differentiating

Enrepreneurs from Small Business Owners: A Conceptualization" is, I believe,a good recent example of research which continues in the long tradition of "if-

we-can-just-find-out-who-the-entrepreneur-is-then-we'll-know-what-entrepre-neurship-is." By singling out tfiis article I do not mean to imply that it is anybener or worse than the myriad of other entrepreneurship anicles that take thetrait approach. I have chosen it because it is the first review anicle on entrepre-neurship to appear in a major journal since 1977, and after such a long hiatus, myreaction was to focus hard on the offering.

As noted above, the central issue in trait approach research is to distinguishenrrepreneurs from other populations of individuals. And, indeed, the Carland, etd. article begins by rearriculating the perpetual dilemma of entrepreneurship re-searchers:

If entrepreneurs exist, as'entities distinct from small and large organizationsand if entrepreneurial activity is a fundamental contributor to economic de-velopment, on what bases may entrepreneurs be separated from nonentre-preneurial managers in order for the phenomenon of entrepreneurship to bestudied and understood? (p. 355-emphasis added)

Carland, et al. do recognize that the owner/manager of the ten or fifteen-year-old firm is not necessarily engaged in entrepreneurship, and therefore these"small business owners," as Carland et al. calls them, should not be included ina samplqof entrepreneurs. However, when it comes to distinguishing betweenthe entrepieneur and the small business owner, it can be shown that Carland et al.are hindered by trait views, by focusing on the entrepreneur and who (s)he is asthe primary level of analysis. After a selective review of the literature, the paperconcludes with some definitions which attempt to distinguish the entrepreneurfrom the small business owner:

Entrepreneur: An entrepreneur is an individual who establishes and managesa business for the principal purposes of profit and growth. The entrepreneuris characterized principally by innovative behavior and will employ strategicmanagement practices in the business.

Small business owner: A small business owner is an individual who estab-lishes and manages a business for the principal purpose of furthering personalgoals. The business must be the primary source of income and will consumethe majority of one's time and resources. The owner perceives the business

9rnmer, 1989 59

as an extension of his or her personality. intncately bound with tamil-v- needsand desires. (p. 358)

From the previous discussion, focusing on the inrentionality of the individualin order to determine whether that individual is an entrepreneur is just anothervariation on the trait theme, and requires us ro investigate the psychology of theentrepreneur and establish a psychological profile of the enrrepreneurial entity.Furthermore, even if we take the definitions at face value, we are immediateiyaware that the definitions raise more questions than they answer. If by definiriona small business owner establishes a business to further personal goals and anentrepreneur establishes a business for profit and growth, then what do we dowith the individual whose personal goal is to establish a business for profit andgrowth? (Are the goals of profit and growth to be considered impersonll goals?)How do we distinguish personal goals from goals of profit and growth? Are wenot, then, embroiled in another dilemma of distinguishing? When you definesmall business owners as having a business which is their primary source ofincome and will consume the majority of their time, do you nor thereby implythat entrepreneurs start organizations that wtll not be their primary source- ofincome, and wlll not occupy the majority of their time and resources? (Are we toassume that the entrepreneurs are off spending the majority of their time pursuingpersonal goals, which, by definition, cannot be related to their organizations?) Iismall business owners perceive the business as an extension of their person-alities, intricately bound with family needs and desires, as opposed to entrepre-neurs who do not perceive their firms in this w8y, then isn't this definition ofsmall business likely to include such family run organizations as Marriott, Best,and Nordstrom, leaders of their industries in both profits and growth? To suggestthat -entrepreneurial startups are not intricately bound up wit[ the personaliiy ofthe founders is to suggest that organiiarions such as Apple, Hewlett-Packard,Lotus, and Microsoft are not entrepreneurial.

The last part of the Carland et al. entrepreneurial definition ties the state ofbeing 1n entrepreneur to innovative behavior and strategic management prac-tices. Carland et al. use a Schumpeterian definition of innovative-behavior 1p.357) which identifies five innovative strategic postures: (l) introduction of newgoods, (2) introduction of new methods of producrion, (3) opening of newmarkets (4) opening of new sources of supply, and (5) industrial ieorginization.Conelating entrepreneurship with innovation, although it is intuitivelylppealing,and seems to take more of a behavioral viewpoint, leads to the problem oi iOenti-fying which firms in an industry are the innovative ones. wouid the first entranrin an industry be considered the entrepreneurial firm, while all subsequent en-trants would be small businesses? How are we to determine the degree of Oiffer-ence between one product and another similar product which constitutes innova-tion? Do new methods of manufacturing/markeiing/distributing the product countas innovative, and, again, what is the degree of difference-between the trulyinnovative and the not so innovative? Among the fifty or so personal .ornput.tmllufacturing companies, e.g., Compaq, Columbia, Leading Edge, Intertec,ACT Ltd., Polo Microsystems, Tava, Stearns Computer, Wyselechnology, Mi-crocraft. Electro _Design, STM Electronics, MAD Computei, Seequa Coilputer,GRiD Systems, Bytec-Comterrn, Seattle Computer, Durango Syste.r, Cit on,Advance Systems, which are the innovators; which are thi srnall businesses?

60 ENTRTRENEUNSHIP THEOI?Y ond PRACNCE

Correlating innovation with entrepreneurship impties that almost all firms in anrndustry which sell to similar customer groups would be considered small busi-nesses. The Carland et al. definitions. while intending to achieve grearer preci-s]on, actually increase the ambiguity in what is already a definitional dilemma.Operationalizing these definitions-pinpoinring who is :rn entrepreneur-be-comes more and more difficult as van de ven (1980) warned.

Carland et al. discuss some past research studies in order to idenrify and listmany characteristics that have been attributed to entrepreneurs. As I mentionedearlier. this is the grand temptation. Entrepreneurship research has reached such apoint of accumulation of data that the Carland et al. attempr ro sort out pastrcsearch according to characteristics studied and to iist these tharacteristics in aable (Table l: Characteristics of Entrepreneurs, p. 356) certainly might seemlike the most effective way to proceed in attempting to reach a definitioi of whols an entrepreneur (although it is hoped that my own Table I has shown that sucha mega-table is not the answer|. On setting up the table, however, it becomesimmediately clear, as Carland et al. admit, that the studies which investigatedthese characteristics and anributed them to entrepreneurs were not all empiical,and more importantly, as Carland et al. point out, the research samples were byno means homogeneous. As discussed earlier, the authors of these past srudiesusually did not provide important information rcgarding rheir samples; €.g., whatrype of industry.or lYpe of firm was studied. TtrJpast studies usui1y r"d'. broadgeneralizations in defining an entrepreneur, and the samples, therefore, includedexecudves' managers,'salespersons, and small business persons. Once Carland etd. set up the table and recognize difficulties with it, we are left wondering aboutthe relevance of including Table I in a paper whose main purpose is tJdistin-guish gltrepreneurs frontsmall business owners.r Carland ei at. end the discus-sion of Table I with this'quesrion:

Are the characteristics listed in Table I those of entrepreneurs, of small busi-ness owners, or of some mixture that may or may noi be capable of demon-strating the entrepreneurial function of economic development?

81' ending the discussion in this way they view Table I as worthless. In theCarland ,eJ al. attemPt to distinguish the intrepreneur from the small businessowner dd'we come any closer to a definition of tne entrepreneur or to an under-standing of entrepreneurship? I hope I have shown the Carland et al. article is a

rCarland et al. attempt to make sense of the wide range of characteristics anributed to enreprcneursrn thctr Table I by stating that Vesper's view (tgSOtlUat several types of entreprcneurs cxist) maybc an appropriate view, ar-rd by implying that differenr entrepreneurs may posseis differenr charac-tenstlcs. thus accounting for the wide range of them in their-table. Howevir, Carland et al. quicklyundcrcut Vesper's notion of entrcpreneurial types by calling Vesper's rypology "a continuum alongwtuch scveral'rypes'of entrepreneurs exist," and then insisting thaiitre entt"prcneurs along theconunuum differ. no_t mercly by possesing differcnt characteriitics, bur by disptaying diffErentdcgrees of intensity of the set of characteristics which makes a.person an entrcpreniur. W1 are backto making fine distinctions and measuring imponderables. Vesper's nodon of entrcprcncunal rypests rcduced by Carland et al. to a caste system, with the mosl entreprcneurial entrcpreneurr'ith.Frrcst ryPes) at the furthest end of the continuum. This is another ilustrarion of thj "*r"r", rowhrch the trait view may take us: the entreprcncur is an entiry like an accordian file who ..n b.rnore full or less full of enueprcneurial "snrff. "

$rnmer, 1989 61

good example of where we end up when. w'ith everv good intention. we ask thewrong question. Who is an entrepreneur'l is the wrong question.

ENTREPRENEURSHIP IS THE CREATIONOF ORGANIZATIONS

Organization.creation (Vesper, 1982), I believe, separates entrepreneurshipfrom other disciplines. Studies of psychological characreristics of enrrepreneurs,sociological explanations of entrepreneurial cultures, economic and demographicexplanations of entrepreneurial locations, etc., all such investigations in thg en-trepreneurship field actually begin with the creation of new organizations . Entre-preneurship is the creation of new organizations. The purpose of this paper is notto substitute one highly specific entrepreneurial definition for another. "Entre-

preneurship is the creation of new organizations" is not offered as a definition.but rather it is an attempt to change a long held and renacious viewpoint in rheentrePreneurship field. If we are to understand the phenomenon of entrepreneur-ship in order to encourage its growth, then we need to focus on the process bywhich new organizations are created. This may seem like a simple refinement offocus (i.e., look at what the entrepreneur does, not who the entrepreneur is), butit is actually a rather thoroughgoing change in our orienration. From this per-spective, other issues in the field might be seen with new'clarity.

An example of such an issue: if entrepreneurship is behavioral, then it can beseen that these behaviors cease once organization creation is over. One of theproblems in the enrepreneurship field is deciding when entrepreneurship ends(Vesper, 1980). (Actually, the Carland et al. attempt ro distinguish entreprlneursfrom small business owners might be approached more fruinrtty if looked atfrom the behavioral perspective of entrepreneurship ending.) Th; organizationcan live o_n past its creation stage to such possible stages as growth, miturity, ordecline (Greiner, 1972; Steinmetz, 1969). From the piocesslie*poinr, the indi-vidual who creates the organization as the entrepreneur takes on other roles ateach stage-innovator, manager, small business owner, division vice-president,et9: Eluepreneurs, like baseball players, are identified by a set of behaviorswhich link thern to organization creation. Managers, small business owners, etc.,are also identified by their behaviors. As long as we adhere to the behavioralapproach and view entrepreneurship as something one does and not who one is,then we can more effectively avoid the Carland et al.-type definitional dilemmas.But once we are tempted to view the entrepreneur, the manager, the small busi-ness owner, etc., as states of being, we become embroiled in trying to pin downtheir inner qualities and intentions. This approach may not compiete-ly resolve thequestion of when entrepreneurship ends, but it makes us look ai the organization,rather than the Person, for our answer. Entrepreneurship ends when the creationstage of the organization ends.

IMPLICATIONS FOR RESEARCH ON THE ENTREPRENEURReorientation toward a behavioral approach to entrepreneurship begins by

asking the primary question, "How do organizations come into exisiencJ?" W;should think of entrepreneurs in regard to the role they play in enabling organiza-tions to come into existence (Jenks, 1950; Kilby, l97l; peterson, 196l; Van de

62 ENTREPRENEIIRSHIP IHEOI?Y ond PI?ACTICE

yen. 1980). The focus wil l be on research questions that ask (among other

rhrngs) whar individuals do to enable organizations to come into existence. rather

than on the traits and characteristics of these individuals.Enrepreneurship research should follow the path of research taken in manage-

nal behiviors (Minuberg,.l973).The issues that Mintzberg articulated regarding

managers are the issues which also confront entrepreneurship. Substitute the

rrordlnrepreneur for manager. and entrepreneurial for mana-eerial in Mintz-

berg's statement of the purPose of his study:

We must be able to answer a number of specific questions before we can

expect managerial training and management science to have any real impact

on Practice:Whar kinds of activities does the manager perform? What kinds of infor-

marion does he process? With who must he work? Where? How frequently?What are the distinguishing characteristics of managerial work? What is of

interest about the media the manager uses, the activities he prefers to engage

in, the flow of these activities during the workday, his use of time, the pres-

sures of the job?Whar basic roles can be infened from the study of the manager's activi-

des? What roles does the manager perform in moving information, in makingdecisions, in dealing with PeoPle?

What variations exist among managerial jobs? To what extent can basicdifferences be attributed to the situation, the incumbent, the job, the organi-zation. and the environment?

To what extent is management a science? To what extent is the manager'swork programmed (that is, repetitive, systematic and predictable)? To what

extent is it programmable? To what extent can the management scientist "re-

program" managerial work? (Mintzberg, 1973: 3)

I believe that research on entrepreneurial behaviors must be based on field*'ork similar to Mintzberg's study of managerial work. Researchers must observeenrrepreneurs in the process of creating organizations. This work must be de-

scnbed in detail and the activities systematized and classified. Knowledge ofenrepreneurial behaviors is dependent on field work.

The rinrlrs of this field work should also be able to answer additional ques-

rlons. What are the specific organization creation skills that an entrePreneurneeds to know? (Palmer, 197l) If we've given up the perspective that tells us that:rn enrepreneur is born with these skills and abilities, then we must ask how are

rhese skills acquired? Some research suggests that entrepreneurial skills are"learn-as-you-go" (Collins & Moore, 1970; Gartner, 1984). Entrepreneurs who

have started one organization seem to be more successful and more efficient inthe srartup of their second and third organizations (Vesper, 1980). If this isusually true, then what expertise, what special knowledge do these entrePreneursgarn from doing their first stanup? One skill they might learn is how to identifyand evaluate problems. A new organization is confronted by many problems, andsome problems are more important than others. It would seem that the moresuccessful entrepreneurs develop expertise in judging which problems need im-mediate attention (Hoad & Rosko, 1964; Lamont, 1972).

The process of team formation needs to be studied (Timmons, 1979). How and

Surrner. 1989 63

why do individuals enter a new venture'l How do they claim ownership of a newidea. organization. erc.? How is esprit de corps generated? How do individualsconvince themselves that entenng a new organization will benefit them (Kidder,

l 9 8 l ) ?All new ventures need some type of support, e.g., financial, legal. marketing,

technological. This assistance can be obtained in many ways. In internal startupsthe entrepreneur has to convince senior management to provide support (Scholl-

hammer, l9S2). What is the political process-the strategies-that the entrepre-neur undertakes to gain internal assistance? Is this any different than the processundertaken by independent entrepreneurs to persuade venture capitalists to investin their ventures? In either case, we need to make this process more efficient andsuccessful because it appears that few new venture plans gain support. The im-portance of business plans to the process of obtaining venture capital and supportneeds to be studied (Roberts, 1983). What are the features of successful businessplans?

CONCLUSIONHow do we know the dancer from the dance? When we view entrepreneurship

from a behavioral perspective we do not artifically separate dancer from dance,we do not attempt to fashion a reassuring simplicity. The behavioral approachchallenges us to develop research questions, methodologies'and techniques thatwill do justice to the complexity of entrepreneurship (Gartner, 1985). The cre-ation of an organization is a very complicated and intricate process, influencedby many factors and influencing us even as we look at it. The entrepreneur is nota fixed state of existence, rather entrepreneurship is a role that individuals under-take to create organizations.

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