The Critical 50 Percent: Doing Your Genetic Inventory

Instinct: Tapping Your Entrepreneurial DNA to Achieve Your Business Goals
by Thomas L. Harrison, Mary H. Frakes

Startling and groundbreaking, this is the first book to apply the insights of human genome research to the concept of success. Authored by Thomas L. Harrison, a corporate CEO and former cell biologist, Instinct argues that great entrepreneurs tend to have certain identifiable, genetic traits. But you do not need these perfect genes to succeed.

Knowing your "DNA for success," you can adopt compensating-and powerful-strategies.

Instinct will show you that financial success is not a matter of inherited wealth, luck, or innate intelligence-but of inborn talents that have to be "switched on" to create the winning scenario that's right for you. Through detailed personal evaluations, Harrison shows you how you can assess and leverage your entrepreneurial strengths.

Chapter 1

When Kay Koplovitz was three years old, she begged to be allowed to accompany her older sister to kindergarten. "I'd ask my mother, 'Why can't I be in kindergarten too? I know my way; I can find it.' So I went off on my own." Teachers tried to send her home. It didn't work, says Koplovitz: "I'd turn around and come right back."

That same kind of determination later led Koplovitz to be ahead of her time in another way when she founded the USA Network, becoming the first woman to head a television network. Koplovitz didn't have a traditional background for becoming a corporate leader; like me, she studied science in college. But that led her to spot an opportunity: the idea of delivering broadcast programming via satellite to cable companies instead of over telephone lines, as the three broadcast networks did.

Koplovitz may not have gone to business school, but she had an entrepreneur's belief in her idea and her ability to make it successful. "I didn't think it was risky," Koplovitz says. "You could just see the opportunity. For me it was as though it had already been written, like it was a historical fact, even though it hadn't occurred yet. I was more certain that it would be successful than I was of a lot of other things. I do think there's something innate about people's tolerance for risk."

Personality is determined by many things, but scientists are beginning to find that a lot more of you is built into you when you're born than we used to think. Scientists now believe that roughly 50 percent of the differences in our personalities is inherited. In working with many entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial thinkers over the years, I've come to believe that the inherited combination of personality traits that is unique to each human being is the basis for whether we will eventually become successful.

The DNA of success is really your DNA of success. Understanding it can help you make better career decisions and keep you evolving in a direction that can make you successful, no matter how unconventional your career path may seem. The DNA of success is especially important for anyone who is considering being an entrepreneur. Any venture starts with an opportunity, a person, and an idea. Unless that person has entrepreneurial DNA, the idea probably won't get very far.

Are Entrepreneurs Born Or Made?

There's some evidence that entrepreneurial thinking tends to run in families. In some cases, families actually produce whole crops of entrepreneurs. One example is that of John Bogle Sr., and John Bogle Jr. Father and son each launched their own separate businesses in the mutual fund industry. In doing so, they were carrying on a tradition that had started generations earlier. Philander Bannister Armstrong, grandfather of Bogle Senior, created Phoenix Mutual Life Insurance Company. Grandfather Bogle was involved in the formation of a canning company. And there may be yet another generation to come. John Bogle Jr. says he sees a contrarian, risk-taking attitude in his daughter. His son is more cautious, but already displays the analytical orientation that characterizes his father and grandfather.

The Bogles are just one example of a family with an entrepreneurial streak. One Seattle family includes nine entrepreneurs spread over three generations: Larry Mounger, his two sons and two daughters, and four third-generation cousins. Twin brothers Ted and Fred Kleisner are another example. Fred is the president and CEO of Wyndham International; he was formerly president and COO of Starwood Hotels and Resorts, which includes the Westin, Sheraton, and St. Regis chains. Ted is president and managing director of the world-famous Greenbrier Resort. Not only are the two men leaders in the same industry, they are also third-generation hoteliers.

I even see it in my own family. Both my sons have already demonstrated entrepreneurial instincts. As college freshmen, they studied to get real estate licenses so they could make some money during their student years, and one has already told me he wants to start a company after he graduates. My daughter has produced a CD of her own music and is selling it. In fact, all of my three children may be born entrepreneurs. They used to sell seashells at the Cape May, New Jersey, seashore. People could walk on the beach and pick them up themselves, but for some reason they bought them from my kids.

Multiple studies have shown that having at least one self-employed parent increases the chances that a person will be self-employed. Are genes at work here? If so, how? Or is it simply a case of learning by example - imprinting, as we trained scientists say? Is the entrepreneurial instinct created before baby's first breath, or when Mom or Dad helps set up a lemonade stand in the front yard, as Pam and I did for our three children?

Being exposed to an entrepreneurial environment early in life clearly is important; we'll look at how and why in Chapter 2. And it's true that some entrepreneurial skills must be learned. No one is born knowing how to put together a good business plan, get financing, or juggle the myriad tasks involved in a start-up.

However, environment doesn't explain everything. Many of the successful people interviewed for this book said they grew up watching entrepreneurial behavior in their family, but just as many said exactly the opposite. When you deal with a born entrepreneur, you usually know it.

"For those who do it over and over again, I think there's probably something innate about them," says Thomas Kinnear, executive director of the University of Michigan's Zell Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies. "Somewhere down in those chromosomes there's gotta be something. My brother's an entrepreneur, my grandfather was an entrepreneur, his father was an entrepreneur. What is it? I've been involved in nine start-ups. Even though I'm a teacher, I can't seem to let go."

Time and time again I have seen eager people come into my office with what seems like a good idea. They may have a great proposal, they may be a lot smarter than I am, they may even be very personable. But the ones who eventually succeed seem to have something else - something that goes beyond smarts, an idea, and being willing to work hard.

Copyright © 2005 by Thomas L. Harrison

About the Author

Thomas L. Harrison is chairman and CEO of Omnicom Group's Diversified Agency Services, the world's largest holding group of marketing services companies.

Mary H. Frakes is an award-winning writer and editor, and the author of Mind Walks: 100 Easy Ways to Relieve Stress, Stay Motivated, and Nourish Your Soul.