"Anyone serious about promoting wealth-creating entrepreneurship must at some point direct attention toward how the moral, legal and political environment aligns incentives. Entrepreneurship -- like everything else -- doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's long past the time we stopped pretending it does."
So says Samuel Gregg, research director at the Acton Institute, in an editorial in the Detroit News about a recent initiative to stimulate entrepreneurship up in Michigan.
It seems that the Kauffman Foundation folks are trying to lure venture capital up to Michigan.
As Mr. Gregg rightly points out -- the answer to spurring entrepreneurship is not throwing money or support bureaucracies at the problem. From Gregg's editorial:
But in the midst of this enthusiasm about entrepreneurship, we risk forgetting that entrepreneurship's capacity to create wealth is heavily determined by the environments in which we live. In many business schools, it's possible to study entrepreneurship without any reference being made to the role played by factors such as rule of law, property rights and low taxes in stimulating wealth-creating entrepreneurship.I could not agree more! We need to educate entrepreneurs not only to be technically good at what they do, but informed citizens who can speak up about the issues that effect their business ventures.
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