Creative personality, opportunity recognition and the tendency to start businesses: A study of their genetic predispositions

• We explored the effect of having a creative personality on opportunity recognition and the tendency to start businesses.
• We confirmed that people with creative personalities are more likely to identify business opportunities and to start businesses.
• We found that common genetic influences account for part of these associations.

We explored the effect of having a creative personality on the identification of business opportunities and the tendency to start businesses. Examining a sample of 3242 twins from the United Kingdom, which we surveyed in 2011, we confirmed that people with creative personalities are more likely than others to identify business opportunities and start businesses. We investigated how much of these associations are accounted for by a shared genetic etiology and found that common genetic influences account for a significant fraction of them. We discuss the implications of our findings for research on creative personality, opportunity recognition and entrepreneurship.