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Interesting opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal called The Next American Frontier by author and journalist Michael Malone. The premise is the Internet is creating a new entrepreneurial economy. The author links the new entrepreneurial economy to the American frontier period. Key quote on statistics related to small business and entrepreneurship:
"The most compelling statistic of all? Half of all new college graduates now believe that self-employment is more secure than a full-time job. Today, 80% of the colleges and universities in the U.S. now offer courses on entrepreneurship; 60% of Gen Y business owners consider themselves to be serial entrepreneurs, according to Inc. magazine. Tellingly, 18 to 24-year-olds are starting companies at a faster rate than 35 to 44-year-olds. And 70% of today's high schoolers intend to start their own companies, according to a Gallup poll."
The author also points out never really has been a nation where entrepreneurship is the dominant economic system:
"In the past there have been trading states like Venice, commercial regions like the Hanseatic League, and even so-called nations of shopkeepers. But there has never been a nation in which the dominant paradigm is entrepreneurship. Not just self-employment or sole proprietorship, but serial company-building, entire careers built on perpetual change, independence and the endless pursuit of the next opportunity."
He goes on to describe this new world as "Scary, exciting, liberating, frustrating, infinitely ambitious and thoroughly amnesic."
