Vanessa Jaklitsch, Consultant of Communications of the Integration and Trade Sector at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), wonders whether entrepreneurs are born or made.

To start answering this question, Jaklitsch quotes Ernst&Young’s report called “Nature or Nurture? Decoding the DNA of the Entrepreneur,” which claims that entrepreneurs share a number of common behaviours and characteristics, even though they might operate in very diverse sectors and live in places all around the world.

The author revises the careers and experiences of several successful entrepreneurs, such as Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Travis Kalanick (Uber), or the creators of Airbnb, among others. Each of them share certain features. The most relevant one is that they take chances and do not fear failure. Clearly, talent is a plus, but without having little risk aversion, the ideas and projects of these entrepreneurs would have probably never come to life.

According to Jaklitsch, other common features of these business projects are: sharing information, offering interesting services at a competitive Price and enabling the access to quality content with no intermediaries and in a fast and simple way.

In Latin America, we also have a growing number of entrepreneurs who, together with investors, incubators and accelerators, are creating the Latin American Entrepreneurial Ecosystem.

In order to promote the development of new companies and projects, the IDB, together with partners such as Google, Visa, DHL and Alibaba.com, has created ConnectAmericas, the first business social network of the Americas. This novelty platform enables entrepreneurs to access information, training, financing and added value events that set the difference between a successful business and failure”

We strongly recommend reading Vanessa Jaklitsch’s full article here.