Science

Research on entrepreneurial talent runs from Joseph Schumpeter (1911) through later critiques. Mechanisms are interacting systems.

Evidence percentages below are relative judgements for this atlas, not fabricated precise statistics. Named studies keep their published bands.

Findings

• 1911 · Joseph Schumpeter — New combinations as the job A function, later psychologised.
• 1973 · Israel Kirzner — Alertness Seeing unpriced gaps — a cognitive claim, hard to test cleanly.
• 2001 · Saras Sarasvathy — Effectuation Expert founders often start from means; still a debated programme.
• 1905–19 · Madam C.J. Walker — A scaled venture under exclusion A file of sales systems, not a mystical hustle gene.
• 2010s · Accelerator studies — Networks and selection YC-like programmes mix teaching with picking winners — identification confounded.
• always · Survivor-bias reviews — Dead firms vanish from the syllabus The methods warning that keeps evidence scores modest.

Mechanisms

• Opportunity noticing — Kirzner’s alertness — trained by domain hours.
• Means-first assembly — Sarasvathy: who I am, what I have, whom I know.
• Stamina and stop rules — The ugly middle, plus the talent of quitting.
• Other-people coordination — Sales, hiring, investors — leadership overlap with downside residual.

Evidence

Debates

• Innate alertness versus domain hours — Kirzner versus Ericsson-in-a-market. Both can be told; hours are more teachable.
• Hero versus team — Biography loves a face. Most surviving firms are coalitions.
• Teaching versus picking — Do accelerators create talent or just photograph it?

Entrepreneurial talent: size the claim to the study. Interaction, not a 50/50 slogan, is the default model.

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