IQ Test for Entrepreneurs

A 2017 study by economists Ross Levine and Yona Rubinstein looked at who becomes an incorporated business owner in the US. They tended to have scored higher on learning aptitude tests as teenagers, to have higher self-esteem, and to have been more likely to break rules as youths. The paper was called "Smart and Illicit".

The same study found unincorporated self-employed people looked quite different, a reminder that "entrepreneur" covers very different groups.

• It measures fluid reasoning, not risk appetite, persistence, selling or taste.
• Twelve minutes and private.
• Useful as one data point about your strengths, alongside how you actually perform under uncertainty.

Online claims that the best founders fall in a specific IQ band are not backed by solid research. The evidence suggests above-average reasoning helps, alongside traits no IQ test measures.

IQ figures quoted for famous founders are estimates, not test results. Our history pages label them that way.

Partly, according to one line of research. A 2008 twin study by Nicos Nicolaou, Scott Shane and colleagues, using several thousand British twins, estimated the heritability of self-employment at around 48%.

Heritability describes differences across a population, not anyone's destiny. The study shows that whatever traits lead people to start businesses are shaped by both genes and circumstance, and IQ is only one of the candidates.