The Speculist

This sort of sounds like news...

Entrepreneurial skill may be in the genes

Wednesday June 7, 2006

Forget family influence and upbringing. When it comes to being an entrepreneur, genes seem to play an important role.

By comparing self-employment in 609 pairs of identical twins, who share all the same genes, and 657 pairs of non-identical twins, Spector and scientists at Imperial College London and Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland analysed the impact of genetics and environment on entrepreneurs.

The rate of entrepreneurs among twins is the same as in the general population. Spector's team found that being identical increased the odds of twins following the same path more than non-identical twins, suggesting genes are important.

...but let's think about it. Genes aren't fully determinative,of course, but there's no question that they have a strong impact on personality. One's temperament obviously has a lot to say about whether one would or would not be inclined to go out and start a business.

So what's the news here, exactly? That identical twins often choose similar career paths? We knew that. That certain personality types are more likely to tend towards entrepreneurial ventures than others? We knew that. That certain personality types are mapped to genetics? Yeah, I think we knew that, too.

Looks like more research funding spent on proving the obvious.

UPDATE: FuturePundit opines that there's more to this story than my snarky assessment would suggest. This gets interesting when we start identifying the specific genes that relate to being an entrepreneur. Randall speculates that parents might start looking to build such genes into their offspring, as part of an overall designer approach to parenting:

It is likely that entrepreneurship comes as a result of other qualities as mentioned above. Will parents choose those qualities based on a desire to make their kids self-employed? Or will they choose those qualities mainly for other reasons and will the effect on entrepreneurial behavior come as a side effect of choices made for other reasons?

People in different cultures, economic classes, occupations, religions, and with different genetically determined qualities for their own minds will make different choices on average. Will this tend to make the human race diverge? Or will there be a wide consensus on all the important genetically controlled qualities of the mind and will humanity tend to converge?

One split I expect: I predict some religious folks will choose genetic qualities that make their kids more inclined to have faith. Whereas more empirically minded folks will choose genetic qualities that make their kids highly skeptical, critical, and empirical. Though some of a more socialistic bent might choose qualities that make kids turn out more altruistic and group-oriented.

And let's not forget: the practically minded designer parents will want to have children with a built-in tendency to clean up their rooms, do the dishes, mow the lawn, etc.