What are the Key Assumptions that underlie the ELS methodology?

Despite years of attempts and thousands of research studies, no one has yet been able to prove that all successful entrepreneurs share some particular personality characteristic. In fact, we believe the thinking behind such a search is misguided. By contrast, our approach is built on several key assumptions:

   1. No matter what the industry, or the market conditions, entrepreneurs are successful to the extent that they have the necessary skills.
   2. What is entrepreneurial skill? The ability to identify a market opportunity and to build a business that captures it; and, in the process of doing so, to create an asset that generates personal as well as community wealth.
   3. Entrepreneurs come to entrepreneurship at different levels of skill.
   4. Entrepreneurs are made and not born. In other words, entrepreneurial skills can be developed and are not the result of innate endowment.
   5. If we want to develop successful entrepreneurs, we must help them build the necessary skills.
   6. How do you develop skills? Entrepreneurs build new skills not by acquiring information or purchasing consulting services but through a process of transformation that involves both internal and external changes. This transformation is what occurs when entrepreneurs move from one skill level to the next. Such a transformation is facilitated by deep and long-term relationships with fellow entrepreneurs as well as successful businesspeople who provide coaching and mentorship.
   7. If we want to create greater individual and community wealth, then as a community, we must collectively assume responsibility for developing a supply of highly skilled entrepreneurs that are capable of building successful companies in sufficient numbers to transform the economy.
   8. Creating a dynamic regional economy involves more than simply developing individual entrepreneurs; it requires building an entrepreneurial community.

While these assumptions may seem obvious, most people in the enterprise development field act as if they believe that entrepreneurs are born and not made. Some say, for example, our problem is that we don’t have enough entrepreneurs in our community; then they act as if there is nothing that can be done to change that situation. How does your thinking, your behavior, and your organization’s operations demonstrate what you believe?