Unleashing the Life-Enhancing Genius of Entrepreneurs
It's probably hard to imagine in the present, particularly for younger readers, but there was a time when ownership of an automobile marked you as a rich robber baron, possession of a computer signaled you were a tech genius with enormous sums of money, and then a wireless mobile phone at the ear indicated that you were a very rich and showy; probably a Hollywood movie producer. Thanks to entrepreneurial endeavor, the former baubles of the rich are presently common items owned by Americans of all income classes.
What this hopefully reminds us is that rising inequality wrought by entrepreneurship, far from making us worse off, is the surest sign of all that the lifestyle gap between the rich and poor is rapidly shrinking. Entrepreneurs grow rich by virtue of commoditizing the luxuries of the elite so that we can all enjoy them. In that case, the ongoing goal should be removing the barriers erected in the way of the very entrepreneurs whose innovations will unquestionably improve our lives and living standards.
The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation is a Kansas City-based organization founded by a very successful entrepreneur (the late Ewing Kauffman) with an eye on encouraging more in the way of innovative behavior. There aren't many causes nobler than this one. Indeed, imagine what our lives would be like if there were 100 individuals around the world achieving in the way that the late Steve Jobs did, or the way that Jeff Bezos and Michael Dell continue to. We need more entrepreneurs, not less.
And in their new "State of Entrepreneurship" ("The Looming Entrepreneurial Boom") report for 2016, the Kauffman Foundation's analysts set about finding more aggressive ways to unleash innovation. In concert with the report's release, I got to sit down with Dane Stangler, Vice President of Research and Policy at the Kauffman Foundation.
His view is that the path to more entrepreneurialism is very basic. Reduce governmental barriers to the frenzied experimentation that leads to new products and services, all the while reducing the barriers to immigration that keep the world's risk takers from reaching the United States. Entrepreneurialism backed by talent will never reveal itself if experimentation is too expensive, and for those who live under repressive governments, both will similarly be suffocated if there's no way to express one's gifts in the marketplace. .
Stangler and Kauffman are relentlessly in pursuit of ways that will lead to more risk-taking, innovation, and by extension, problem solving. Attached is my interview of Stangler from which readers can learn more.
