American and Egyptian entrepreneurial differences are discussed within a number of themes related to cultural and environmental factors: the transition to a free market including transparency; money and its cultural meanings; locus of control; attitude towards risk; and work-life equilibrium. The second article explores how entrepreneurship contexts (regulatory, cognitive and normative environments) in four countries (Egypt, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates) are conductive to entrepreneurship and contrasts this instrument with other measures of family business and national fiscal and innovation policies as related to new business creation.