The facets of the entrepreneur: identifying entrepreneurial potential

People who start new businesses vary in the degree of entrepreneurial talent and temperament they possess. The same is true of strategic leaders and intrapreneurs inside large organisations, where entrepreneurial people are required to champion the change agenda in dynamic and turbulent environments. These issues can be explored in the context of six key entrepreneur character themes, or natural and instinctive behaviours. Techniques help, but alone they cannot compensate for missing characteristics. Without the important entrepreneur characteristics, survival and growth rates are lower. This paper outlines a new framework for identifying entrepreneurs and describes the research programme through which the model has been validated.