Business demanded both innate and acquired skills. It is not easy to define expertise, because every commodity and area of trade had its own modus operandi and organizational structure. Founding an independent business was different from running an established firm or from management of a joint-stock Company. The popular and inventive contemporary handbooks on how to succeed alternated between clichés and commonsense. Henry Audley's amoral ten rules for thriving provide insight into the loan and property markets, but they are less relevant to the shipping industry or the commodity trades. Despite increasing specialization, most merchants employed a minimal staff and therefore required personal knowledge of the whole process of production, distribution and sale.

Unrelenting and persistent motivation was also a sine qua non. The origins and relative importance of different traits of character are, however, difficult to establish. Innate talent cannot clearly be distinguished from acquired drives and there is no sure way of determining whether hypermotivation was inner-directed or dependent on external approval. What is certain is that the art of merchandising cannot simply be equated with a particular Geist. The stereotypes of businessmen in sociological models are abstracted uncritically from literary sources rather than from empirical evidence and they are constructed by crude psychological reductionism.

Innovation and risk

Entrepreneurial initiative and a propensity to innovate were vital. The potentialities of new markets, products, knowledge and methods could not easily be inferred from pre-existing facts and a businessman had to choose as well as act, to search and reorganize, to implement new ideas and look ahead.