Page 120 - 1-Entrepreneurship and Local Economic Development by Norman Walzer (z-lib.org)

What Makes a Successful Entrepreneur? 109

The behavioral perspective has produced a new wave of studies examin-
ing the actions of entrepreneurs to bring new organizations to life. One im-
portant achievement of the behavioral perspective is its utilization of a field
research methodology in which behavioral researchers investigate the com-
plicated process of organization creation and look for answers in the realm
of everyday business activities.
Although the behavioral perspective on entrepreneurship has moved en-
trepreneurial research a step forward by researching entrepreneurial actions,
it is limited in its explanatory power of entrepreneurship success. Focusing
on the functions that entrepreneurs perform provides some important in-
sights into the entrepreneurial process, but it does not add more to an un-
derstanding of entrepreneurial performance.
There is a certain parallel between the trait and behavioral perspectives
on entrepreneurship. In the personality trait paradigm, the methodological
search targets universal personal characteristics, while the behavioral per-
spective looks for generic entrepreneurial actions/functions/behaviors. If
one can demonstrate a set of common actions performed by successful en-
trepreneurs, then one also must provide an explanation of what makes the
performance of these functions successful. As Cope (2005) rightfully points
out, the ability of entrepreneurs to learn and adapt is missing from the be-
havioral perspective.
The personality perspective claims that personal characteristics con-
tribute to business success, although it fails to prove it. The behavioral per-
spective has largely overlooked the question of business success factors; in-
stead, it has moved the research into looking for the important components
of the business creation process. In other words, the behavioral perspective
studies various important components of business creation but has left the
question of how the process begins, develops, and grows without an an-
swer. In its attempt to avoid a focus on entrepreneurial personal traits, the
behavioral perspective has lost touch with the individual entrepreneur. It
has become mechanistic.
While we acknowledge that proper motivation is an essential prerequisite
to successful entrepreneurship—a “fire in the belly” (Fackler 2001)—we are
not prepared to ascribe any other innate traits (and whether or not motiva-
tion is innate is open to debate) to this phenomenon. Furthermore, we
would argue that behaviors are little more than manifestations of the skill
set possessed by the entrepreneur.
Another emergent and distinctive domain of entrepreneurship research
involves a cognitive approach which has moved the focus of analysis to the
thinking, or cognitive, processes of entrepreneurs. The main assumption is
that various cognitive processes underlie the behavior of an entrepreneur.
Researchers study the processes that explain how entrepreneurs receive,