While Newcastle University Business School's new £45m home is being created at the old Scottish and Newcastle brewery site, it is investing in grey matter as well as bricks and mortar. John Hill hears about the plans and passions of the three new professors drawn to the North East.

WE’RE told that there’s something different about the entrepreneur. But what exactly is it?

What drives a person to seek out certain opportunities, and is there a reason why some people get it right more often than others?

We’re constantly invited to ask this question rhetorically, or to scratch the surface with talk of humble upbringings, strict work ethics and 16-hour days. But people who really dig down into this field are often accused of attempting some sort of wild business alchemy, trying to find solid answers to things that are just quirks of fate.

In short, it’s a perfect breeding ground for academics.

“I saw a BBC programme back in 2003 that was looking at the mind of the millionaire”, says Professor Dimo Dimov, who is just settling into his new role as Newcastle University Business School’s new professor of innovation and enterprise.

“They rounded up these millionaires and compared them to ordinary people. The implicit conclusion was that because their minds were different, that’s why these people are millionaires. Of course, another explanation is that their minds were different because they were millionaires.

“I’m fascinated by the notion of entrepreneurial opportunity, about how an entrepreneur becomes aware of an opportunity and pursues it, and how investors do the same.

“No one can teach people a sure way of spotting opportunities. There should be a way, however, to give people skills in terms of how they think about opportunities as they go along. It’s not about helping to produce a certain person because no one can guarantee that, but we can hope that out of 100 people that we teach, perhaps five or 10 would be more successful than they would have been.”

Professor Dimov is one of three recent professorial appointments by the business school, which is aiming to boost the quality of its expertise, as well as its surroundings. Work is under way on a £45m building on the site of the old Scottish and Newcastle Brewery, which is set to be completed in autumn next year. In the meantime, the institution has been linking up with universities in Shanghai, Melbourne and the Netherlands, and has filled three of the five professorial posts it has on offer.

Business School director Professor Ian Clarke says he hopes to locate a chair of strategy and a chair of international business management in the next few months.

He says: “We want these people to lead the development of their subject areas. We’re looking for individuals who are really interested in a broad sense of that agenda of going beyond the scholarship and having more impact.”

This is where all this talk about the make-up of the entrepreneur comes in. Clarke has indicated that those who take up these positions will be invited to ask detailed questions that have practical application in the business world. The first person to take his seat was Professor Klaus Schoefer, a marketing specialist who moved to the North East from the University of Vienna’s department of business administration.

More recently, Professor Dimov joined from the University of Connecticut, while Professor James Hayton was brought in from Bocconi University in Milan to become the Goldman professor of entrepreneurship.

All three cite similar reasons for joining. Each says they were at a stage of their career where they were looking for a good professorial appointment, and each was attracted by the idea of being able to shape a young institution’s development.