Entrepreneurs: Early Signs
by Miki SaxonEMANIO CEO and occasional contributor here KG Charles-Harris and I were discussing an article about how being a trouble-maker as a teenager can be predictive behavior to becoming an entrepreneur.
The same urge to innovate, think outside the box, take risks and break rules that helps an entrepreneur later in life might lead them to more destructive behavior as a teenager.
But only the guys.
However, the association only held up in the case of male entrepreneurs. Female entrepreneurship could not be predicted by moderately anti-social teenage behavior.
And those guys were well-off and white.
People coming from families that were comparatively well off in 1979, where the parents had some level of higher education, and where they lived in a two-parent home through age 14 or so, were more likely to be entrepreneurs.
Essentially the whole thing says what we all know, but rarely admit.
Affluent, white, male troublemakers are more likely to become entrepreneurs.
Their families have enough pull and resources to prevent them from being labeled ‘difficult’, let alone ‘delinquent’, because once you label a person and they are treated by society according to that label they often end up believing the label themselves…whatever it is.
And that label often becomes self-fulfilling prophesy.
Are you really surprised that when a middle or upper-class boy acts out the long-term result will be substantially different than when a black, inner city boy does the same thing?
Professionally, managers often do the same thing when they treat their people based on their title—then wonder why they don’t fulfill their promise.
Flickr image credit: SiSter PhotograPher