Once in while there are some interesting findings that come out of academia. The National Dialogue on Entrepreneurship reports on a new study sponsored by the Census Bureau (I thought the constitution says they were only supposed to count us every ten years to figure out representation in the House....) that looks at the impact of a family business background on entrepreneurial success. Does it make a difference if an entrepreneur grew up in a family business environment? The study finds that it does improve success for the entrepreneur, but only if the entrepreneur actually worked in the family business.
That is not an earth-shattering finding to any of us who have some family business in our history. I learned a lot of lessons from the successes and mistakes by working in the businesses that my Dad started and bought. I see the same thing in some of my students who come from family businesses and have had experience working in them.
So the conclusion I would draw from this is that if you want your kid to have a slightly better chance for success should she decide to become an entrepreneur, which is much more likely in today's economy, then let her work in your business while she is growing up. (A note of caution: Read this post if you live in Washington state before you start your kids doing any work in your business). I would also conclude that with the explosion of entrepreneurs in the economy, our future is bright if we heed Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young and teach our children well. (For you younger readers, this is a group from the 60s and 70s, not a law firm from Manhattan).
But the authors of the study, both from California I might add, make one of those incredible leaps in logic that only a hard-core fan of socialized entrepreneurship can make. They conclude that these findings show that we need more public sector "governmental programs providing mentorship, internships, or apprentice-type training (to) help the historical inequalities in business ownership patterns." That's right, it is not fair that my father (who did not go to college and was the classic self-made man from the WWII generation) took the risk to start and buy businesses and gave me the chance to learn by working in several of these businesses. Why, that gave me some marginal benefit in the economic game of life.
I have been warning of government creeping into the world of entrepreneurship. The more important it becomes in our economy, the more we will see them trying to meddle by trying to pick market winners, getting their fingers into angel financing, trying to set standards for training entrepreneurs, etc., etc. And this is not just a concern within the US. As entrepreneurship expands economies around the globe, agencies like the UN are also trying to get their hands into the process with proposals like the World Tax and other programs to redistribute wealth and pick market winners to establish new businesses in specific economies of their choosing.
For our economy to continue to grow over the coming decades it will require continued entrepreneurial development, which requires free markets, not socialized entrepreneurship.
