The com­mon notion of the entre­pren­eur as a unique indi­vidual is influ­enced by pub­lic fig­ures such as Henry Ford, Richard Bran­son, Dick Smith and Don­ald Trump. They have achieved celebrity status, giv­ing rise to many ‘myths’ about entre­pren­eur­ship, such as the idea that it is an innate abil­ity that can not be acquired and that busi­ness instinct is more import­ant than busi­ness skill (Wel­ling­ton and Zand­vakili, 2006). Because of their prom­in­ent status in soci­ety, entre­pren­eurs have become the her­oes of con­tem­por­ary soci­ety, admired for their abil­ity accu­mu­late wealth and cre­ate eco­nomic prosper­ity (Whelan and O’Gorman, 2007).

entre­pren­eurs are the her­oes of society

Aca­demic dis­course about entre­pren­eur­ship is divided and some­times even con­fus­ing (de Goey, 1996; Pech, 2009; Stey­aert, 1998; Wel­ling­ton and Zand­vakili, 2006). Are entre­pren­eurs guided by a ‘prot­est­ant ethic’, as pro­claimed by Max Weber or are they, fol­low­ing Schum­peter, unique indi­vidu­als exer­cising men­tal free­dom? Do entre­pren­eurs have a high need to achieve (n-Ach), fol­low­ing McClelland’s the­ory of motiv­a­tion, or are they, as argued by de Vries, vic­tims of a trau­matic child­hood (de Goey, 1996)?

In this essay, entre­pren­eurs from four con­tin­ents are dis­cussed and con­tras­ted, guided by extant lit­er­at­ure on entre­pren­eur­ship. Entre­pren­eurs from dif­fer­ent con­tin­ents are chosen to provide a cross-cultural per­spect­ive on the phe­nomenon. Freddy Heineken is included because of his con­tro­ver­sial place in Dutch soci­ety. Michael Dell is included because he is often touted as the quint­es­sen­tial entre­pren­eur. Aus­tralian Peter Ter­ret provides a con­trast to Heineken and Dell because of the mod­est size of his ven­ture com­pared to the former. Lastly, Viet­namese entre­pren­eur Le Khac Hiep rep­res­ents a non-Western perspective.

The avail­able inform­a­tion about these people is used to decon­struct the myth­o­logy of the entre­pren­eur, in search of the ‘essence’ of entre­pren­eur­ship. It is argued that the essen­tial­ist approach to entre­pren­eur­ial stud­ies can only provide lim­ited insight and that nar­rat­ive ana­lysis of entre­pren­eur­ial bio­graph­ies should be the pre­ferred method to study this phe­nom­ena. The mana­gerial impact of this con­clu­sion is that the most effect­ive means by which people can become more entre­pren­eur­ial is to study bio­graph­ies of suc­cess­ful entrepreneurs.

Freddy Heineken

Freddy (Alfred) Heineken (1923–2002) is one of the most well known Dutch entre­pren­eurs of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury. He joined the Heineken brew­ery in Ams­ter­dam dur­ing the second World War. The busi­ness was foun­ded in 1863 by his grand­father, but was at the time no longer owned by the fam­ily. After the war, Freddy worked sev­eral years in the sales depart­ment of Heineken’s Amer­ican importer, where he developed his mar­ket­ing skills. Some years later, Freddy decided to buy the major­ity of shares, cre­at­ing the start­ing point of more than four dec­ades of suc­cess­ful entre­pren­eur­ship. Under his lead­er­ship, which ended in 1989, Heineken grew to become one of the major brew­er­ies in the world and one of the most recog­nis­able beer brands. In the Neth­er­lands, Freddy Heineken was a celebrity entre­pren­eur, spe­cially after his kid­nap­ping and sub­sequent release in 1983 (Heineken, 2005; Smit, 1996). Shortly after his death, sev­eral facts about Heineken’s activ­it­ies out­side his busi­ness have been revealed (Zwaap, 2002), provid­ing an insight into his per­son­al­ity and motiv­a­tional drives. These rev­el­a­tions show him to be an influ­en­tial power broker in Dutch polit­ics, using his mar­ket­ing skills to assist polit­ical friends in the lib­eral party (VVD). These aspects of his bio­graphy reveal him to be a strong Machiavel­lian type, which was most likely a per­son­al­ity trait that assisted him in grow­ing the busi­ness. The Machiavel­lian per­son­al­ity type is gen­er­ally con­sidered to be prag­matic, emo­tion­ally dis­tanced and pri­or­it­ising the goals over the means (Rob­bins and Judge, 2007).

I don’t sell beer, I sell good times

Above all, the entre­pren­eur­ial essence of Freddy Heineken is that he was a gif­ted mar­keter. He is reputed to have said: “I don’t sell beer, I sell good times”, (Dutch ori­ginal: “Ik verkoop geen bier, ik verkoop gezel­ligheid”), illus­trat­ing that Heineken did not suf­fer from ‘Mar­ket­ing Myopia’, as defined by Levitt (1960). He under­stood the need to focus on the per­ceived bene­fits of his product, rather than mar­ket­ing the product itself. This vis­ion enabled him to pos­i­tion Heineken beer and dif­fer­en­ti­ate it from other brands. Heineken used his mar­ket­ing skills as a vehicle for his high need for achieve­ment and drive to accu­mu­late power. It is the com­bin­a­tion of his strong per­son­al­ity and his mar­ket­ing skills that made him the suc­cess­ful entre­pren­eur he became to be.

Michael Dell

Michael Dell was inter­ested in tech­no­logy from a young age and star­ted to sell com­puters while still attend­ing uni­ver­sity. Selling com­puters was not some­thing new in 1984, but Dell sold com­puters dir­ectly to con­sumers, bypassing tra­di­tional dis­tri­bu­tion chan­nels. This allowed him to min­im­ise dis­tri­bu­tion costs and thus gen­er­ate above aver­age profits. He decided to quit uni­ver­sity and cor­por­at­ise his busi­ness, which has since then grown into one of the largest com­puter man­u­fac­tur­ers in the world (Burke, 2003). His own dis­sat­is­fac­tion with exist­ing com­puter sup­pli­ers enabled him to recog­nise an oppor­tun­ity in this mar­ket (Burke, 2003). The suc­cess of his busi­ness is also foun­ded on an under­stand­ing of con­sumer needs. Dell reg­u­larly reads Usenet for­ums, chat rooms and Web sites to find out what cus­tom­ers think about his products: “I learn about things we are doing well. I learn when we screw up” (Fish­man, 2001).

Michael is reluct­ant to provide inform­a­tion about his private life (Fish­man, 2001), mak­ing it dif­fi­cult to tap into the psy­cho­logy of this entre­pren­eur. Dell, who used to com­pete in triath­lons, is described by Ralph Szy­genda, CIO of Gen­eral Motors, as a “viol­ent com­pet­itor who doesn’t like to loose” (Burke, 2003, 35), illus­trat­ing Dell’s com­pet­it­ive drive. Accord­ing to a long time friend, Michael Dell is very determ­ined and has “never devi­ated from his early busi­ness vis­ion” and “almost enjoyed being doubted by oth­ers” (Burke, 2003, p. 35), illus­trat­ing his high need for achieve­ment. Michael Dell’s entre­pren­eur­ial essence could be his insight in sup­ply chain man­age­ment and cus­tomer focus, revolu­tion­ising mar­ket­ing logist­ics, not only in the com­puter industry, but across indus­tries (Burke, 2003). Dell has con­tin­ued to innov­ate their sup­ply chain, being one of the first busi­nesses (in 1996) to util­ise the Inter­net to mar­ket com­puters dir­ectly to con­sumers (Fish­man, 2001).

Peter Ter­ret

Aus­tralian entre­pren­eur Peter Ter­ret has a back­ground in geo­detic and topo­graphic sur­vey and developed an interest in Global Pos­i­tion­ing Sys­tems (GPS) in 1986. He is the Man­aging Dir­ector of Rap­idMap, a medium sized com­pany estab­lished in 1994, that spe­cial­ises in geo­spa­tial equip­ment and ser­vices. Rap­idMap has since grown into an inter­na­tional pro­vider deliv­er­ing geo­spa­tial products and ser­vices (Pech, 2009).

Com­pared to the pre­vi­ously dis­cussed entre­pren­eur­ial heavy weights Heineken and Dell, Rap­idMap is a mod­est busi­ness. Although Rap­idMap is a global player in the geo­spa­tial ser­vices mar­ket, com­pared to Heineken and Dell it is a small busi­ness. The entre­pren­eur­ial prin­ciples that determ­ine the des­tiny of all busi­nesses are, how­ever, inde­pend­ent of size. Just like Dell, Ter­ret has been able to recog­nise an ‘imper­fec­tion’ in the mar­ket. While Dell developed a mar­ket­ing strategy, based on his own dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the com­puter mar­ket, Terret’s insight was that he tapped into the need for some organ­isa­tions, such as water cor­por­a­tions, to man­age numer­ous phys­ical assets over a large geo­graph­ical area. Their abil­ity to recog­nise oppor­tun­ity is based on know­ledge of the mar­kets in which they oper­ate and being able to think from the consumer’s per­spect­ive. Par­al­lel with Heineken, Ter­ret based the suc­cess of his ven­ture also on his mar­ket­ing skills. By aug­ment­ing his product with the ‘field-kit’, Rap­idMap was able to dif­fer­en­ti­ate itself from the com­pet­i­tion, enabling Ter­ret to cap­ture the emer­ging mar­ket for mobile GPS solutions.

Le Khac Hiep

Le Khac Hiep is one of the many entre­pren­eurs that bene­fits from Vietnam’s Doi Moi (res­tor­a­tion) policy and trans­ition from a cent­rally con­trolled eco­nomy to a mar­ket eco­nomy. He is the chair­man of Vin­Com Joint Stock Com­pany, spe­cial­ising in prop­erty devel­op­ment. Vin­Com has two major hold­ings: Vin­Com City Towers in Hanoi and the Sofitel Vin­Pearl Resort and Spa in Hha Trang province.

Com­pared to Michael Dell and Ter­ret, Hiep was not the primum movens of Vin­Com, but just like Heineken, hired by the com­pany. This con­trary to the com­mon notion of the entre­pren­eur as the per­son start­ing a ven­ture, which shows that the for­tunes of an organ­isa­tion can be turned by hir­ing people with an entre­pren­eur­ial mindset.

Le Khac Hiep states that one of the most import­ant aspects of his achieve­ment is a “hun­ger for suc­cess and aggress­ive­ness and … the desire to do some­thing mean­ing­ful for fam­ily friends and people” (Pech, 2009, p. 160). Suz­anne Young, who inter­viewed Hiep, por­trays him as a per­son with “gra­cious­ness and mod­esty with a respect­ful dis­pos­i­tion and hun­ger for achieve­ment” (Pech, 2009, p. 163, emphasis added). He shares a high desire for achieve­ment with Heineken and Dell, but Hiep’s defin­i­tion of suc­cess is groun­ded in fam­ily, friends and people in gen­eral. In a West­ern cul­tural con­text, achieve­ment is usu­ally dir­ec­ted at per­sonal success.

Dis­cus­sion

Two com­mon themes can be extrac­ted from the case studies. All four described entre­pren­eurs show a high need for achieve­ment (n-Ach) as defined by McCel­land (1976). The dir­ec­tion of the need to achieve is determ­ined by cul­ture, bio­graphy and per­son­al­ity. This is illus­trated by Le Khac Hiep, whose need to achieve is focused at the col­lect­ive, rather than his own indi­vidual achieve­ment, illus­trat­ing the individualism-collectivism spec­trum iden­ti­fied by Hofs­tede (1993). South-East Asian cul­tures, such as Viet­nam, are clas­si­fied as col­lect­iv­ist cul­tures, while the Neth­er­lands, Aus­tralia and the USA are clas­si­fied as individualistic.

the Philosopher’s Stone of entrepreneurialism

Char­ac­ter­istic of entre­pren­eurs described in busi­ness lit­er­at­ure is that their need for achieve­ment is expressed through com­mer­cial activ­it­ies. A need for achieve­ment can, how­ever, also be intern­ally dir­ec­ted, such as is the case with most artists, or the need to achieve can be aimed at chan­ging the beha­viour of oth­ers, such as is the case with, for example, polit­ical act­iv­ists. Although artists, act­iv­ists and other people also exhibit entre­pren­eur­ial beha­viour, the extant lit­er­at­ure on entre­pren­eurs focuses on busi­ness ven­tures, with the aim the extract the Philosopher’s Stone of entre­pren­eur­i­al­ism so that oth­ers can duplic­ate their achievements. A high need to achieve is a sine qua non for any entre­pren­eur. It is a neces­sary con­di­tion that to be entre­pren­eur­ial one needs a high drive to achieve.

This is sup­por­ted by find­ings from McCel­land (1976), who demon­strated a link between the need to achieve and eco­nomic growth. It is, how­ever, not a suf­fi­cient con­di­tion to become more entre­pren­eur­ial. Other per­sonal attrib­utes, i.e. abil­it­ies, atti­tudes, skills and know­ledge are also import­ant determ­in­ants of an entre­pren­eur­ial mind­set (Pech, 2009).

The second aspect is the rela­tion­ship between learnt skills and innate abil­it­ies of the entre­pren­eur. Michael Dell seems to have an innate abil­ity to recog­nise oppor­tun­ity and has developed his mar­ket­ing skills in the pro­cess. Freddy Heineken also obtained his mar­ket­ing skills on the job, while expat­ri­ated to the United States. The avail­able data does not indic­ate whether Peter Ter­ret and Le Khac Hiep have formal qual­i­fic­a­tions in management.

How­ever, from this it can not be con­cluded that entre­pren­eurs by defin­i­tion have an innate abil­ity to recog­nise mar­ket­ing oppor­tun­it­ies rather than being skilled in mar­ket­ing tech­niques. First of all, the selec­ted sample is too small to draw a gen­eral con­clu­sion. Secondly, the avail­able bio­graph­ies are incom­plete and could hide any formal edu­ca­tion under­taken by these entrepreneurs.

Syn­thesis

The four entre­pren­eurs dis­cussed in this over­view illus­trate that entre­pren­eur­ship is not an isol­ated West­ern cul­tural phe­nom­ena. All four entre­pren­eurs show a high need for achieve­ment and an (innate?) abil­ity to spot oppor­tun­it­ies in the mar­ket. The cul­ture inde­pend­ent nature of entre­pren­eur­ial beha­viour is con­firmed by numer­ous eth­no­graphic stud­ies of, for example, the Ibos in Nigeria or the Anti­oqueos in Columbia (de Goey, 1996). But, does the fact that entre­pren­eur­ship is a cul­ture inde­pend­ent phe­nom­ena sup­port the con­clu­sion that there is an ‘essence’ of entrepreneurship?

Entre­pren­eur­ial nar­rat­ives offer a wide range of char­ac­ter­ist­ics that entre­pren­eurs are con­sidered to be imbued with. Cun­ning­ham and Lis­cheron (1991) iden­ti­fied sev­eral schools of thought in entre­pren­eur­ship stud­ies. The Great Per­son school assumes that entre­pren­eurs have an innate intu­ition and abil­ity to be entre­pren­eurs. The Psy­cho­lo­gical Char­ac­ter­ist­ics school focuses on per­son­al­ity traits as ena­blers of entre­pren­eur­ial suc­cess. The Clas­sical School fol­lows the Schum­pe­t­erian idea of the entre­pren­eur as an innov­ator. The more prag­matic Man­age­ment School sees entre­pren­eurs as organ­isers of eco­nomic ven­tures, trained in the neces­sary tech­nical skills. Lastly, the Lead­er­ship school focuses on the abil­ity of entre­pren­eurs to motiv­ate people (Cun­ning­ham and Lis­cheron, 1991). All schools of thought have in com­mon that they are essen­tial­ist in nature, endeav­our­ing to define those aspects of entre­pren­eur­ial beha­viour that are char­ac­ter­istic to all entre­pren­eurs. Cun­ning­ham and Lis­cheron (1991) argue that the cur­rent vari­ety of schools of thought is due to the fact that the aca­demic study of entre­pren­eurs is a young field of endeav­our and pro­pose a prag­matic approach that uses insights from all schools of thought, depend­ing on the stage of devel­op­ment the busi­ness is in. This call for paradig­matic plur­al­ism reflects the com­plex nature of entre­pren­eur­i­al­ism, but it also shows a deeper prob­lem in entre­pren­eur­ial studies.

Defin­ing dynamic phe­nom­ena such as entre­pren­eur­ship from an essen­tial­ist per­spect­ive is an impossible task because the com­plex­ity of social real­ity con­tinu­ously presents new aspects that do not fit into a pre­vi­ously con­sidered com­plete defin­i­tion. No list of char­ac­ter­ist­ics asso­ci­ated with entre­pren­eur­ship can ever be con­sidered a suf­fi­cient con­di­tion for a par­tic­u­lar per­son to become an entre­pren­eur. Some char­ac­ter­ist­ics, such as a n Achieve­ment, can be con­sidered a neces­sary con­di­tion for entre­pren­eur­ship to arise. Envir­on­mental obstacles and oppor­tun­ity factors, such as com­munity accept­ance social shifts and resource avail­ab­il­ity, inter­act with per­sonal attrib­utes and it is the con­ver­gence of the two that enable suc­cess­ful busi­ness ven­tures (Pech, 2009). Given the unpre­dict­able nature of envir­on­mental obstacles and oppor­tun­ity factors, pro­spects of  estab­lish­ing a causal model of suc­cess­ful entre­pren­eur­ship are minimal.

The myth of the entrepreneur

Entre­pren­eur­ial nar­rat­ives por­tray the entre­pren­eur as the hero of con­tem­por­ary cap­it­al­ism. This view, influ­enced by the early work of Schum­peter which emphas­ises achieve­ments of the indi­vidual, shows many par­al­lels with the role of the hero in myth­o­logy. In myth­o­logy, the hero is a per­son from humble back­ground who has a need to leave the group in search of adven­ture. The hero over­comes adversity and tem­por­ary fail­ures, but even­tu­ally suc­ceeds in achiev­ing his or her goals. Whelan and O’Gorman (2007) demon­strated that the typ­ical entre­pren­eur­ial bio­graphy has many par­al­lels with tra­di­tional hero myth­o­logy. The entre­pren­eur is myth­o­lo­gical, not in the sense of myth as an untrue story, but as an archetypal per­son in con­tem­por­ary society.

Fol­low­ing the hero theme, the label ‘entre­pren­eur­ial’ is mostly asso­ci­ated with people who are suc­cess­ful (Legge and Hindle, 1997; Pech, 2009), exclud­ing those that did not suc­ceed. This value laden use of the cat­egory ‘entre­pren­eur­ial’ (Sey­mour, 2006) dir­ects all research effort into those that were suc­cess­ful. This approach is ana­log­ous with a pale­on­to­lo­gist who only stud­ies spe­cies that have sur­vived evol­u­tion­ary pres­sures, ignor­ing those that are extinct. This cre­ates a san­it­ised and incom­plete pic­ture of the entre­pren­eur­ial phenomena.

French anthro­po­lo­gist Bruno Latour invest­ig­ated the pro­cess of sci­ence cre­ation and found that the res­ults of sci­entific work are an ideal­ised ver­sion of the actual pro­cess (Widdershoven-Heerding, 1995). This is also the case in entre­pren­eur­ial stud­ies. Entre­pren­eur­ial bio­graph­ies are always incom­plete and san­it­ised ver­sions of real­ity. Bio­graph­ies depend on the avail­able sources. Entre­pren­eurs that are researched pro­ject their own self-image on the inform­a­tion they provide about them­selves which can lead to sub­con­scious repres­sion of the role of serendip­ity or even act­ively cen­sor­ing of bio­graph­ies. Research­ers are forced to con­dense the ambi­gu­ity of entre­pren­eur­ial real­ity into the con­cepts described in research. One such con­densed aspect of entre­pren­eur­i­al­ism is the focus on indi­vidual achieve­ments, largely ignor­ing the influ­ence that spouses, col­leagues, sup­pli­ers and oth­ers have on the entre­pren­eur. This focus on the indi­vidual matches the myth­o­lo­gical hero aspects of entre­pren­eur­i­al­ism and is con­trary to the focus on team­work in con­tem­por­ary busi­ness dis­course (Whelan and O’Gorman, 2007).

In light of the paradig­matic con­fu­sion and prob­lem­atic aspects of essen­tial­ism, some research­ers have called for and exper­i­mented with altern­at­ive meth­ods to research entre­pren­eurs (Jen­nings, Per­ren and Carter, 2005; Sey­mour, 2006; Stey­aert, 1998). They pro­pose to use inter­pret­ive meth­ods to study entre­pren­eurs. The scholar of entre­pren­eur­ship should engage the avail­able inform­a­tion and uncover gender, class and other aspects, look­ing from a pros­opo­graph­ical per­spect­ive that includes the net­work of people around the entre­pren­eur. This aspect will lead to a deep Ver­stehen of entre­pren­eur­ial beha­viour instead of a cata­logue of a char­ac­ter­ist­ics and models.

Con­clu­sion

there is no essence of entrepreneurship

The search for the essence of entre­pren­eur­ial think­ing and beha­viour is guided by the desire to be able to duplic­ate the suc­cesses of the stud­ied sub­jects. It is thought that, assum­ing the essence of entre­pren­eurs can be found, this know­ledge can help oth­ers to achieve the same. The paradig­matic con­fu­sion in entre­pren­eur­ial stud­ies illus­trates that there is no essence of entre­pren­eur­ship, which is sup­por­ted by cur­rent think­ing in philo­sophy of sci­ence. This does not imply that entre­pren­eur­ship can not be suc­cess­fully stud­ied to assist oth­ers in becom­ing more entre­pren­eur­ial. The most mean­ing­ful way to learn how to become more entre­pren­eur­ial is to study the beha­viour of entre­pren­eurs and read their bio­graph­ies and inter­pret­a­tions of their beha­viour. This can be achieved by equip­ping stu­dents of entre­pren­eur­i­al­ism with skills to ana­lyse and decon­struct nar­rat­ive to achieve a deep under­stand­ing of the entre­pren­eurs that came before them.

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