ABSTRACT
There is a long tradition of characterizing entrepreneurs as ‘special’ people with personality traits that differentiate them from people in general or people in other professions. For example, studies in psychology have sought to show that entrepreneurs are more (Stewart and Roth 2001) or less (Miner and Raju 2004) risk averse than the general population. And Busenitz and Barney (1997) showed that entrepreneurs are more prone to heuristics and biases than managers. Yet recent trends in practice offer a challenge to this idea of ‘specialness’. In Bangladesh, for example, initiatives from the Grameen Bank and BRAC (formerly known as the Bangladesh Rehabilitation Assistance Committee) have created over eight million women entrepreneurs, most of whom are illiterate and would never have become entrepreneurs without the training and assistance provided through microfinance agencies. 1 A series of efforts around the world to educate ordinary people to become entrepreneurs implicitly assumes that almost anyone can become an entrepreneur, at least in the sense of starting and running new ventures (Kuratko 2005).
