Here's a question for cocktail party conversations: Are entrepreneurs born or made?

I asked each of the entrepreneurs profiled in today's cover stories, and they all felt that it is a

combination -- a certain part you are born with and the rest either circumstantial or learned.

Yet Bo Fishback, who has launched several successful tech companies, disagrees.

``When I first started working for the foundation, I was a believer in the born. I don't believe that with any part of my body anymore,'' said Fishback, vice president for the Kauffman Foundation, an entrepreneurship research group. ``Entrepreneurs are created from such a diverse set of people and situations; they are made. You may be born with some personality traits that might help you, but you can learn it if you work hard.''

It doesn't surprise me that entrepreneurs often think they are born with it because their drive to create a company is so strong, but Kauffman research shows that entrepreneurs are often the only ones in the families that went that route. Indeed, that is the case with Calvin Harris and Brian Javeline, who are profiled today.

And the mother-daughter team of Mayra del Valle and Leylani Cardosa could argue for the born -- indeed, there are entrepreneurial tendencies throughout that extended family -- but I believe it is nurture all the way. Del Valle's mother and father brought her up to believe she could succeed at anything if she worked hard, and she passed that on to her daughter.

What unites all these stories is passion. You can hear the excitement in their voices when they talk about their products or ideas. ``I love what I do, so it isn't like work at all,'' Cardosa says.

Read their stories beginning on Page 16.

While we are talking about entrepreneurship, I'd like to remind all of you that the Business Plan Challenge is just around the corner. So if you have a business idea or have a startup that will be less than a year old in February when the contest opens, start polishing your business plan to enter. And if you were a winner or a finalist in one of the last nine contests, I'd love to hear how you are doing. Send an update to ndahl

berg@MiamiHerald.com

Next week, you can test out your elevator pitch -- and potentially win some of the $80,000 in prizes -- at the University of Miami's Gobal Entrepreneurship Week Elevator Pitch Contest open to the public. See www.thelaunch

pad.org/GEW for details.

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