See What Motivates Entrepreneurs

Motivation is the driving force within individuals that propel them to action. Entrepreneurial motivations are those factors that propel individuals to become entrepreneurs. Scholars have conducted various researches on entrepreneurial motivations and have come up with several factors that motivate people to become entrepreneurs.


Some scholars have adopted the trait approach and come up with certain traits and characteristics that they believe entrepreneurs possess.

Some of these characteristics have been discussed earlier on in the previous study session. However, the problem with this school of thought is that the scholars do not agree on the special characteristics that the entrepreneur possess; also it has been discovered that there are some successful entrepreneurs that do not possess some or all of the special characteristics identified.




Shane, Locke and Collins (2003) discussed the major motivations that prior researchers have suggested could influence the entrepreneurial process, as well as motivations that are less commonly studied in this area. They argue that human motivations influence entrepreneurial decisions.

Furthermore, scholars are of the opinion that variance across people in these motivations will influence who pursues entrepreneurial opportunities, who assembles resources, and how people undertake the entrepreneurial process. They identify several human motivations that influence the entrepreneurial process and conclude that entrepreneurship is not solely the result of human action, (external factors also play a role e.g., the status of the economy, the availability of venture capital, the actions of competitors, and government regulations).

However, if the environmental factors are held constant, they observe that human motivation plays a critical role in the entrepreneurial process. They also stress that motivational differences such as need for achievement, risk taking, tolerance for ambiguity, and locus of control, self-efficacy and desire for independence, drive and egoistic passion also influence the entrepreneurial process. They discover that people vary in their willingness and ability to engage in the entrepreneurial process because of non-motivational individual differences such as their opportunity cost (Amit, Muller & Cockburn, 2009), their stocks of financial capital (Evans & Leighton, 1989), their social ties to investors (Aldrich & Zimmer, 1986), and their career experience (Carroll & Mosakowski, 1987; Cooper, Woo, & Dunkleberg, 1989).


Other non-motivational factors that influence entrepreneurship are life-path circumstances (such as unsatisfactory work environment, negative displacement, career transition and positive pull influences) and background characteristics (such as childhood, family environment, education, age and work history) (Unilag, 2007). Bhat and McCline (2005) also studied what motivates people to become entrepreneurs and identified entrepreneurial motivators to be: Desire for Innovation, the desire for autonomy, wealth and financial independence, the achievement of personal objectives and the propensity for action ('doing') and excitement of entrepreneurship. Some of these factors are briefly discussed in the following sections.

These are entrepreneurial motivations that propel an individual to become entrepreneurs
and they include discovery of opportunities, need for achievement, desire to be
one’s own boss etc