By: Ted Pincus

October 18, 2005, Chicago Sun-Times

Entrepreneurs are made, not born. Chicago's Lloyd Shefsky believes those words so passionately that they became the title of his book, published by McGraw Hill, and the watchwords of his quest to sell America's college students on entrepreneurial studies. He's helping turn what was once a seat-of-the-pants art into a serious career-path curriculum.

Last Thursday, at Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management, where he's a professor, he defended that concept on stage in a bare-knuckle debate against an arch foe: an author of a new book that preaches the opposite theory. Before an audience of students and faculty attending the first of a new series of debates on major issues, Shefsky -- soft-spoken, eyes twinkling, but with a pitbull spirit -- crisply countered the thesis of Johns Hopkins psychologist John Gartner, whose book, The Hypomanic Edge, maintains that entrepreneurial success is strictly genetic. In predicting who has the potential to conceive a new business idea and launch it as a commercial hit, Gartner says, "The answer lies in our genes," and he tried to prove it with numerous father-son examples.

Ignition is the secret

Shefsky built a cogent argument that "almost everyone is born with entrepreneurial fuel. The secret is igniting it."

The 64-year-old professor -- a University of Chicago law grad and a CPA -- has been igniting that spark in hundreds of Kellogg MBA students over nine years as he pioneers a curriculum designed to answer the question: "What does it take to be a successful entrepreneur?"

Based on 26 years building his own startup law firm and as a mentor to countless seedling enterprises, and interviewing 200 of America's top entrepreneurs for his book, plus watching his own graduates succeed, Shefsky thinks he knows the answer, even though it isn't a simple task to pass it on.

Essentially, Shefsky has been taking ambitious young MBA students (one-third foreign-born) mostly intent on big-corporate careers, and telling them to look inward and assess their maximum capabilities, and outward to discern untapped market opportunities.

He teaches them the gospel that aggressiveness is not a dirty word, that after incisive, low-cost market research on a shoe string, even today, it's highly possible to beat the giants through wits and guerrilla marketing.

His sermons include a clear contrast between the "hired manager" mind-set, which is focused on maintaining a clean career record (no failures) and thus avoiding risks, vs. the entrepreneurial mentality with no fear of failure. "They often wear failure as a badge of experience," he says, "and this difference affects virtually every aspect of their work life."

His course covers all aspects of management as a different breed, emphasizing, like Special Forces boot camp, agility, instinct and resourcefulness. This is driven home by an exceptional parade of guest speakers he presents each year, including the likes of Starbucks Founder Howard Schultz and American Girl Founder Pleasant Rowland.

Among the many students who paid attention, got inspired and launched embryonic businesses is John Stoops, a Kellogg grad of last June who just three weeks ago opened his own audience-participation comedy improv troupe at the Lake Shore Theater on North Broadway. It's not on the big Broadway stage yet, but Stoops snagged Jim Belushi's son, Rob, and other strong talent for the startup, playing to sell-out houses.

"Lloyd Shefsky has been a true inspirational patron saint to all of us," he says. "He taught us not just the basic managerial skill sets, but the vital intangibles, the human elements of drive and determination."

A casual request

What began as a casual request by former Kellogg Dean Don Jacobs to Shefsky in 1996 to create a course on entrepreneurial leadership has blossomed into one of the world's most comprehensive programs, embracing 28 courses.

All this culminated in recent weeks with a total Kellogg commitment through the establishment of a full-scale Department of Entrepreneurship under Chairman Steve Rogers, made possible by the multimillion-dollar support provided by the Levy Institute.

It's a payback by one of Northwestern's top examples, Larry Levy, who founded a simple delicatessen here after graduating in 1978, and built one of the world's major food service organizations.

He's a living Exhibit A to prove Shefsky's argument.

Ted Pincus is a finance professor at DePaul and an independent communications consultant and journalist.