Customer Reviews

Born Entrepreneurs, Born Leaders: How Your Genes Affect Your Work Life

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Laden with scientifically grounded research, this text offers good generic data about Genes in relation to employment and few areas of life.

The book looks at leaders (entrepreneur-types) and followers (employees); behaviors of Gene-types or versions; and organizational use of genetics to create job assignments, design incentives, or formulate training plans.

Unfortunately, the important topic of "Gene Discrimination" was not covered. Rather this text appeared to promote the idea of using Genes for organizational benefit. Since the brain rules or overrides genetics, there was also no mention of how conscious thought can alter genetic predisposition.

This book may be useless for those already familiar with the subject; however, it would be a useful eye-opener for others.

There is the age old question: Are leaders born or made? Are entrepreneurs a product of nature or nurture? Scott Shane attempts to answer those questions in his book - Born Entrepreneurs, Born Leaders.

His conclusion is that while we all like to think that we have total control over our lives, what we do and who we become, we are all influenced to a large extent by our genes. Our DNA has a much more profound affect on our lives than we would like to believe.

We are comfortable with the fact that the color of our hair and eyes are determined by our genes. But when it comes to our behavior, we become uneasy thinking that our genes have a large influence. Scott shows that studies have time and time again proven the impact that our genes have on how we perform in the workplace and whether we actually become leaders and/or entrepreneurs.

The studies have shown that our genes have great influence on our behavior. However Shane is quick to point out that this influence indicates a propensity to behave in a certain manner. We are not predestined by our DNA to act in a specific manner. We can and do have control over our lives. At times we just have to work harder to achieve the same goals than someone who is born with a natural tendency toward that goal.

While the book deals with a very interesting topic, I found it tedious to read. I believe for the book to appeal to a wide audience, it should be much shorter. Shane is a scientist and this work is directed more at being accepted by his peers than communicating with the average reader. There are 50 pages of reference notes at the end of the book.

If you are interested in a detailed study of the impact of DNA on leadership and entrepreneurs, then you might find this helpful. If you are interested in an overview of the subject, I believe you will find this a bit tedious to read. The lessons could be made more interesting by focusing less on repetitive information and more on interesting stories surrounding the subject.

I read this book, found it a little repetitive, and have concluded that it could be condensed by about 80 or so pages. The big problem is that, as interesting as its subject is, most chapters are little better than literature reviews, summarizing the findings of studies showing a link between traits and genetic markers. If you are a skeptic about the influence of genetics on (work) behavior, this book is a good summary of current research. If not - if you are not a skeptics and even vaguely familiar with the research, this book will add little to the discussion.

The best chapters are the first - explaining how genes affect the traits we exhibit - and the last - ruminating on why this is important, how the knowledge might be used by companies, and the ethical dilemmas it creates. The intervening chapters generally focus on one trait (say, Machivellian opportunism) and review the studies showing it to have a genetic component to it. The writer succeeds in not making these summaries dry, but he is certainly no Steven Pinker, Matt Ridley, or Richard Dawkins. While the style is less formal than an academic journal, it certainly isn't popular science. And the chapters get quite repetitive.

Further, my opinion is that the author spends too little time on the "so what" question, relegated to the last chapter which is around 20 pages. Nor does he do a very good job in his ruminations here, which amount to little more than telling us that training employees for leadership/customer-orientedness/etc doesn't matter much if their genes do not predispose them to those traits, and the admonition that we should be familiar with our (genetically based) strengths and weaknesses. The latter point is an old one from the days of What Color Is Your Parachute? 2010: A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers. The former point is undermined by the author's consistent demonstration that genetics at most seems to account for 50% of variance amongst people (and is too pessimistic to yield many good business conclusions).

Long and short: I can only see this book as beneficial to (a) the skeptic, and (b) the non-skeptic who wants to brush up on their knowledge of the literature. Otherwise, this book will offer little.

This book should have been a large essay, but at 200+ pages it seems to drag on quite a bit. Since it is not particularly academically oriented and not particularly enthusiastic or engrossing for casual readers it remains a hard recommendation for a broad audience. I think the author brings up some interesting ideas, but at the end of the days it's still a mushy equilibrium between nature vs. nurture.

Are there arrows and indications pointing in one direction or the other? Sure... but this is not the best result at a cohesive framework to explore them.

Most reviewers seem to miss the point. How often do you read a business leader's self-serving autobiography ascribing his or her success to innate ability? Never. It's always the same: my parents made me who I am today, or I achieved my acumen through hard work and adversity, blah blah. The works of Pinker, Harris, Wilson, and Frehley haven't yet entered the popular consciousness, except as curiosities. Any attempt to help general readers internalize the implication of genetic diversity on innate talent and unequal distribution of wealth should be lauded.
My only criticism of the work is that the author quotes heavily from Frehley's blog instead of his book Leadership is Innate and does not mention the author by name. I hope this is corrected in a future revision.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. I've always enjoyed reading about the nature vs. nurture argument, and this book takes it one step further, with more data to back up the nature argument. The weakness, of course, is that it leaves one with the odd sense of being "destined" to be a certain way. Few people wish to believe this, yet the authors do make a convincing case.

I'm not really sure how to rate this book. On the one hand it is of virtually no practical use. It talks about all sorts of different ways genetic factors influences who we are and what we do, but since the sort of genetic testing required to know these factors isn't something readily available to employers, managers, or individuals you're left with a feeling of "well that's all great, but I can't really do anything with this information".

Now, if you're OK with a gap on the application side of things, there are certainly plenty of thought-provoking aspects to the book. I, for one, found the discussion of the so-called "novelty gene" as particularly interesting for my own self-analysis. I'm sure other readers would find other points of discussion equally worthwhile. There is also a discussion of the implications of genetic testing and related subjects in the final chapter, which will engage some readers.

Here's the rub, though. Much of the research on genetic influences comes from the study of indentical twins and adoptees. It gets a bit tiring to read over and over again "studies of identical twins indicates that genetics make up X% of the determining factor in an individual's ______ direction". And there are so many caveats about how multiple things impact aspects of our personality and whatnot. I had a hard time staying focused.

So overall some interesting bits, but the reading takes some work and you don't end up with much you can actualy use in the end.

So start with a study that looks at identical twins and compare those fraternal twins and you find out that statistically a person's likelihood of becoming a business owner is 40% from their genes and 60% from how they were raised. I do not know if this book answers a lot of questions on how to foster more entrepreneurs but it contains some very interesting statistics and empirical data.

Why I didn't get overly excited about the book was because the numbers aren't that far apart. On a 40/60 split it still shows that creating your own livelihood is anyone's game.

I found the book to be well laid-out and the information was presented in an easy to read method. I just don't think there is anything really earth shattering in the book. I would have thought the information could have just as easily been presented as an article in a magazine or blog.

I love this book very much! I do not know why some readers got the impressions of Gene Determinism after reading this book. What I got out of this book is how potent our environment is for changing the gene expressions for us.

In many places, Shane talked about how the social environment (like social support in and out of your family, parent divorce, and adolescence hardship) can change the possibility for certain genes to express themselves. For example, in Chapter 2, it shows that not having the experience of being abused will reduce the likelihood that the "harm-avoiding gene" expresses itself (that is, it is less likely that the given gene will make a person become harm avoiding). In Chapter 7, there are discussions that adolescence hardship can enhance the genetic influence on whether you become a leader. In other words, if you had a harsh environment when growing up, whether you become a leader is more likely to be determined by your genes. And if you had a good supportive environment in adolescence, whether you become a leader is less likely to be impacted by your genes.

I think these information perfectly answers the "so-what" question. It seems to me that knowing what genes are impacting what aspects of our work life is only the first step. The more important second step is to understand how we can change the growing environment so that to minimize genetic influence for certain "bad genes" while maximize that for the good ones. As a grown-up, I may be frustrated to know that I can not change my adolescence environment, and so, gene expressions can no longer be changed for me. But think about the future generations, those ways for changing are very helpful for our kids. Indeed, I applaud for Shane's detailed discussion on these potential ways to change gene expressions.

This book is fascinating reading about how our DNA affects our career choices. Here are a just a few of the hundreds of ways genes affect our work lives, as outlined in the book:

- Were you born to be rich? 45% of the variation between adults in their annual income is the result of genetics, in a variety of indirect ways.

- Do you choose jobs with high status and prestige (doctor versus trash collector)? 60% of the difference between people in occupational status is genetic.

- How much risk can you stomach? Genes account for 55% of the difference in willingness to take chances. Willingness to take chances increases the odds you will start a business (since startups are a risky business).

- Are you sociable, talkative and outgoing? Or are you introverted? Entrepreneurs are more likely to be "extraverted".

As the book points out, genes are not THE determining factor of career success or of our success in starting and running a small business. They are one factor that influences us -- not the only factor.

Read this book. Chances are, you'll be amazed at what you didn't know about the impact of genes in the career choices we make.