The research isn't absolutely conclusive, but Matt Clancy -- who is an assistant teaching professor of economics at Iowa State -- makes an interesting case (over here) about entrepreneurship being mostly contagious.
The article cites a long list of studies that have more or less found that being around entrepreneurs can have a measurable positive effect on whether you yourself might also become one.
There is evidence to suggest that this is true whether you're a scientist working with someone who has previously commercialized a piece of research, a community with entrepreneurial neighbors, a student with an entrepreneurial mentor, or a child with parents who have started their own business(es).
According to one Swedish study, the children of entrepreneurs are about 12 percentage points more likely to start a business at some point in their life compared to people with non-entrepreneur parents.
But as I said at the beginning of this post, the research isn't entirely conclusive. Could a proclivity for risk and independence be instead genetic? Could it be that entrepreneur types simply seek out other entrepreneurs to hang out with? Perhaps these associations aren't causal. Maybe.