Why Entrepreneurship? A Worldwide Perspective

Abstract

WHY ENTREPRENEURSHIP? A WORLDWIDE PERSPECTIVE Entrepreneurship is in. Everyone is talking about it; everyone wants more of it. Entrepreneurship is seen as offering something important to governments, cities, corporations, and individuals, but ten years ago the subject evoked yawns if you could get anyone to discuss it. Why is there so much interest in entrepreneurship? Why is the socialist government of France encouraging entrepreneurship? Why are the Irish, the Dutch, the British, the Bangladeshis--even the Chinese--launching entrepreneurship programs? When working in Sri Lanka, two summers ago, I counted seven independent of entrepreneurship. The interest of countries is paralleled by that of regions. The new interest is not confined to the public sector. IBM, Borg-Warner, the Ohio Bell Company and a host of corporations in the United States and Europe are exploring ways to elicit entrepreneurship within their structures. Just last summer I participated in a seminar on the subject for companies in the Netherlands. Why does corporate management perceive entrepreneurship appropriate to corporate functions and interests? The enhanced interest in entrepreneurship is also apparent in a significant growth in self-employment, a growth in the rate of company formations, the numbers of courses being attended, and the proliferation of howto books and magazines devoted to the subject. The signs of the new interest are all around us. Government agencies and programs for entrepreneurship and business are proliferating all over the world. It would be hard to find a state in the United States without an entrepreneurship program. Terms like incubator facilities, hi-tech and innovation centers, venture capital task forces, and small business development centers are now a part of the standard vocabulary. Vocational educators have incorporated entrepreneurship in workshops and syllabi and sets of teaching modules. Even in academe there is a shift in the direction of entrepreneurship. To its surprise, the Harvard Business School has discovered that 70 percent of its graduates of work in companies with fewer than 500 workers, and that almost 30 percent run their own companies. Entrepreneurial consultants abound. Many of us in the field are a little sad as we watch the hustlers and hucksters rushing in to make capital on the latest buzz words. Nevertheless, underlying the fadlike character of the broad current of interest in entrepreneurship is a broad and substantial river which draws on large pools of genuine interest. The phenomenon has strong historical roots and has been influenced by major changes in human values. It is vital to society to institutionalize and maintain the wellsprings of interest in entrepreneurship now emerging through the world Sources of the Current Interest in Entrepreneurship Perhaps the most powerful tributary feeding the river of interest in entrepreneurship is the apparent intractability of a very depressing world economy after decades of fat times. came through a period when anything and everything seemed to work. Economists felt they controlled and tuned events. Sociologists and others of good will were sure they were on the way to curing poverty, racism, sexism--all the historic social problems. Industrial managers could sell anything they produced. Then nothing seemed to work. The economy slumped, the ambitious social programs are in shambles, and managers are in trouble. People are looking for something that works, and entrepreneurship offers something to look forward to. Unfortunately, the welcome being given to studies which claim that new businesses generate whole orders of magnitude more new jobs and innovations than large established companies is unwarranted; the data won't bear close scrutiny. As more than one government official has told me, We know the data are questionable, but it has really helped the good cause. …

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