The question has boggled the minds of many for years: do entrepreneurs have an innate trait for creative genius, or is it a quality that can be fostered and learnt by others in a business?
Judging by the reaction from investors at Apple, which saw its shares fall after the chief executive Steve Jobs announced he would be taking more medical leave, many people still believe entrepreneurs are somehow born with the right mix of DNA for conjuring up innovative ideas. The thinking goes that if Mr Jobs is not around to create game-changing gadgets like the iPad and iPhone, who will?
Apple, of course, is not the only company that has grappled with such hypotheticals from investors or faithful followers of a company. Microsoft has its chairman Bill Gates, while Amazon.com has its chief executive Jeff Bezos and Facebook has its founder Mark Zuckerberg.
Numerous studies have tried to get to the heart of whether entrepreneurs like these men are born, or bred through their educational and work experiences. Researchers at Northeastern University's school of entrepreneurship in Boston decided to go straight to the source and asked entrepreneurs what sparked their motivation to start a venture.
One of their surveys of 200 American entrepreneurs found that a majority of them, 62 per cent, credited an "innate drive" as the main motivator for launching a business.
But just because entrepreneurs feel a primal hunger to capitalise on their concepts does not mean they have a touch of Donald Trump in their genes. According to a more recent study, which surveyed 549 successful entrepreneurs, most did not have an entrepreneurial parent.
They started after becoming sick of working for others, being inspired by an idea they wanted to commercialise or hoping to build their wealth before retiring, according to Vivek Wadhwa, an entrepreneur turned academic who worked on the study and is an adjunct professor at Harvard Law School.
Regardless of whether or not entrepreneurs are biologically wired to begin a business, smart and successful ones, experts say, have a knack for soaking up the creative juices of others as they try to fill their company's pool of innovative ideas. In other words, entrepreneurial creativity can, and should, be learnt.
"Some people have more of an affinity to it than others," says Shikkha Gupta, the principal consultant for Ideas Management Consultants in Dubai. But Ms Gupta adds: "Creativity is a skill. The more you practise, the more creative you will be."
Just ask Jonney Shih. His name may not be immediately recognisable but before tablets and slate computers became all the rage, Mr Shih pushed his company, Asustek, to create and produce the world's first netbook (the lightweight, pint-sized laptops that was expected to ship 43 million units globally last year, according to ABI Research).
Mr Shih, who has been the chairman of Asustek for more than 15 years, has long argued that electronic gadgets should be created from the customer's point of view. It sounds a simple enough philosophy, but even Brian Dunn, the chief executive of the global consumer electronics retailer Best Buy, has said manufacturers sometimes fall short of this promise.
That is why Best Buy consults with device makers about the gaps that its customers bring up with gadgets and produces some of its own under brands such as Insignia and Rocketfish.
Mr Shih's little-known secret for garnering creative intelligence about what gadget lovers want, and how to improve what already exists, starts with lunch.
When we met last year at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, he said he regularly sat down over lunch with a small, rotating group of employees to find out what gizmos they were using, how they were using them and what needed improving.
One marketer might tell Mr Shih that she desires a fancier laptop co-branded with another luxury label, while a programmer may remark that the keyboard on a laptop is simply too small for his fingertips.
A lot of that kind of information then gets passed on and filtered through product designers and engineers, paving the way for cutting-edge products from Asustek such as a tiny computer built into the keyboard or a working concept of a touchscreen computer bracelet that would wrap around a customer's wrist.
"At most organisations I've worked with that are successful, there's a commitment to creativity and a lot of excellent ideas come from the bottom line," says Ms Gupta. Even the academics seem to agree on this point. One thesis from a PhD candidate in New Zealand argues that "business success is not based on knowledge but is rather about being resourceful.
"The becoming of the creative entrepreneur includes developing capability to network with peers and mentors and communicate with customers and staff, and developing passion for and resilience in the pursuit of a dream."
In other words, the most successful entrepreneurs will know when to reach out for creative help, and keep on reaching.
