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2.2. Characteristics of the Entrepreneur 
The concept of "entrepreneur" is very difficult to be 
precisely determined. According to Jennigs (1994), the 
definitions that have been proposed are influenced by logic 
and methodology of their scientific field in which the 
analysis is made (mainly in economics, psychology and 
management). Despite the fact that there have been many 
common views on the definition of the entrepreneur, there is 
a lack of a common theoretical framework that can 
synthesize these views. 
The views expressed in the literature about the concept of 
the entrepreneur can be grouped under two broad approaches: 
the economics approach and the humanistic approach. 
Several researchers argue that entrepreneurship came from 
economics. Verin (1982, mentioned in Filion, 2011), by 
examining the origins of the "entrepreneur" showed that the 
term has acquired its current meaning in the 17th century. 
The word comes from the French verb "entreprendre" which 
means" I attempt". Casson and Wadson (2007) mention two 
general categories of entrepreneurs: the "manager-
entrepreneurs" and "innovative entrepreneurs". The first 
group includes the classical entrepreneur and the second 
category includes the approaches of Schumpeter (1934) as 
presented above. The fact is that for the interpretation of 
entrepreneurship requires knowledge of the personal 
characteristics of entrepreneurs. McClelland notes that the 
need for achievement is the main characteristic of the 
entrepreneur and he focused his research interest in the 
search for an ideal type of entrepreneur. McClelland (1961) 
notes that an entrepreneur is someone who has control over 
the production which is not intended only for his own 
consumption. By the late 1980s, the efforts of researchers 
focused on the entrepreneur definition by finding specific 
personal characteristics such as the need for autonomy, 
sovereignty and desire for control. Another approach taken 
was that of creating business profiles, composing personal 
characteristics. For example, Sexton and Bowman (1986), 
were able to distinguish entrepreneurs from managers based 
on a combination of features of the human personality as 
confident, optimism and independence. 
So far it has not recorded a stable and specific set of 
characteristics of the human personality that distinguish 
entrepreneurs compared to the general population. As a 
result, since the early 1990s, research focused more on action 
and activity of business and not on personal characteristics. 
For example, the analysis is focusing on how an entrepreneur 
configures the intention to set up a business. In these studies, 
the "intention" is defined as that condition of mind which 
directs attention to the experience and turns the action of the 
individual to a particular target. Indeed, research shows that 
the positive intentions of a person for specific behaviors 
predict with sufficient certainty the occurrence of this 
behavior. According to Chaston (2010) personal and social 
factors indirectly affect the behavior of the entrepreneur. 
Also, there is an interest regarding whether entrepreneurs 
are more willing to risk-taking in relation to the rest of the 
population. Although there is no common definition of "risk-
taking", however, entrepreneurs are considered to be people 
who are attracted by the risk and invest in risky businesses 
that promise to maximize economic gains. However, surveys 
show that entrepreneurs do not show a greater propensity for 
risk-taking in relation to the general population (Mitchell et 
al., 2002). In practice, entrepreneurs have a tendency to 
classify doubtful and uncertain scenarios with more positive 
way because they 
use specific cognitive 
models. 
Undoubtedly, entrepreneurs are operating in a constantly 
changing environment and they learn through their business 
decisions and activities. According to Kuratko (2009), 
entrepreneurs should be considered as products of the 
environment in which they operate, while he notes that 
entrepreneurs reflect the characteristics of the period and the 
place they live and operate. 
As noted by Reynolds (2014), the characteristics of the 
entrepreneur are both national and individual. Regarding 
national factors, there are economic characteristics, such as 
the GDP per capita and the Gini coefficient (related to 
income inequality), in a sense that, the higher the GDP per 
capita, the higher the growth rate and the lower the 
inequality, the more the resources an economy has in order to 
allow the creation of new businesses. Also, Reynolds (2014) 

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39 
Evangelia Fragouli and Nikolaos Giannakovitis: Entrepreneurship and Financial Crisis: A Critical Investigation of
Entrepreneurship Prospects and Opportunities That Lie Behind the Financial Crisis 
mentions cultural characteristics, as well as individual 
characteristics, such as the gender –since females tend to 
have lower motivation to establish new companies than 
males-, the level of education, the work activity, etc. The 
factor of culture to entrepreneurship has been pointed out in 
the study of Wennberg et al. (2013), which they claim that 
some cultures have a higher level of fear of failure than other 
cultures and that fear is a key obstacle for people to establish 
a new company. Fear of failure, as well, is associated with 
lower levels of self-efficacy, which is “an individual’s 
estimate of her (or his) ability to capably perform the roles 
and tasks to be successful as an entrepreneur” (Gatewood et 
al., 2014, p. 102), a decisive factor of entrepreneurship. Also, 
Welpe et al. (2012), in their analysis highlight as key factors 
of entrepreneurship the feelings of fear, joy and anger, as 
related to the evaluation of a business opportunity.