A sample of Bogotá entrepreneurs suggests that their social origins and backgrounds differ markedly from those of the general Colombian population. The entrepreneur is well-educated, urban, and comes from a predominantly middle class background, in a society that is mainly rural, has a low educational level, and an overwhelmingly large lower class.
As Weber and Tawney have pointed out, the emergence of the entrepreneur is inevitably affected by his cultural milieu. Motivations and goals making profit desirable are derived from the society which socializes him; he makes decisions which are influenced by the residues, values, and restraints which society places upon risk, risk-taking, and freedom of economic choice. The entrepreneurial role, with its behavioral expectations, occupies a status granted it by a society—a status not fully derived from the power of wealth or capital manipulation, but from traditional prestige values and traditional concepts of the “good life” and the definition of the individual's proper relationship to his society. Some societies appear to breed entrepreneurs more readily than others, and encourage their appearance through offering differential rewards and incentives.