Malcolm Gladwell's essay in this week's New Yorker tackles the characteristics of a few successful entrepreneurs (this, unfortunately, just links to the abstract. To read the whole thing, go to the newstand - now! - and buy a copy of the New Yorker), as well as the mistakes of failed. Gladwell looks at some existing research and books on entrepreneurship and highlights two models - the "risk-taker" and the "predator" model:

There is almost always, they conclude, a moment of great capital accumulation - a particular transaction that catapults him into prominence. The entrepreneur has access to that deal by virtue of occupying a "structural hole," a niche that gives him a unique perspective on a particular market. Villette and Vuillermot go on, "The businessman looks for partners to a transaction who do not have the same definition as he of the value of the goods exchanged, that is, who undervalue what they sell to him or overvalue what they buy from him in comparison to his own evaluation." He moves decisively. He repeats the good deal over and over again, until the opportunity closes, and - most crucially - his focus throughout that sequence is on hedging his bets and minimizing his chances of failure. The truly successful businessman, in Villette and Vuillermot's telling, is anything but a risk-taker. He is a predator, and predators seek to incur the least risk possible while hunting.

[...]

The risk-taking model suggests that the entrepreneur's chief advantage is one of temperament - he's braver than the rest of us are. In the predator's model, the entrepreneur's advantage is analytical - he's better at figuring out a sure thing than the rest of us.

What this says, then, is that many previous notions of the entrepreneur do not necessarily hold up. Among these would be the conception that failure is good for an entrepreneur, as it can be used to learn for future endeavors. But, rather than a shotgun spread approach of risk-failure-learn, risk-failure-learn, risk-success, it's much more worthwhile to be calculatingand analytical in the approach to entrepreneurship. Which, if you actually think about it, makes a hell of a lot of sense. Gladwell goes on to offer a number of examples (Ted Turner) for why and how this method works (all of which are worth reading). But for the aspring entrepreneur, the strength of the lessor resides in the charecteristics of entrepreneurship that set the successful apart from the failures - specifically preparation and risk-aversion.

The economist Scott Shane, in his book "The Illusions of Entrepreneurship," makes a similar argument. Yes, he says many entrepreneurs take plenty of risks - but those are generally the failed entrepreneurs, not the success stories. The failures violate all kinds of established principles of new-business formation. New-business success is clearly correlated with the size of initial capitalization. But failed entrepreneurs tend to be wildly undercapitalized. The data show that organizing as a corporation is best. But failed entrepreneurs tend to organize as sole proprietorships. Writing a business plan is a must; failed entrepreneurs rarely take that step. Taking over an existing business is always the best bet; failed entrepreneurs prefer to start from scratch. Ninety per cent of the fastest-growing companies in the country sell to other businesses; failed entrepreneurs usually try selling to consumers, and, rather than serving customers that other businesses have missed, they chase the same people as their competitors do. The list goes on; they underemphasize marketing; they don't understand the importance of financial controls; they try to compete on price. Shane concedes that some of these risks are unavoidable: would-be entrepreneurs take them because they have no choice. But a good many of these risks reflect a lack of preparation or foresight.

So, before you embark on your own career, investments and life of entrepreneurship, keep these characteristics in mind. And, if you're looking for a good entrepreneurship program, ReadWriteWeb has a list of the top 6 colleges for entrepreneurship.