One of the most interesting centers for new ideas about economic growth is the Startup Genome project. (See http://www.startupgenome.com and http://blog.startupcompass.co ) This is one of the few places that moves beyond breathless, anecdotal stories to real analysis of the factors in the success and failure of startups.
Its leader, Max Marmer, published an interesting blog on the Harvard Business Review site a couple of weeks ago. It was entitled the Danger of Celebritizing Entrepreneurship (http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/10/the_danger_of_celebritizing_en.html). Like Peter Theil (see my earlier blog post at http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/28980374812/what-kills-innovation), he is concerned about the trivialization of the entrepreneurial process and the celebration of business ideas that are just not that significant. In turn, this causes a decline in the number of truly important ideas.
More recently, he has moved the discussion to the convergence of business entrepreneurship and social innovation.
See Transformational Entrepreneurship: Where Technology Meets Societal Impact ( http://blog.startupcompass.co/transformational-entrepreneurship-where-techn-11064 ) and Reversing the Decline in Transformational Ideas ( http://blog.startupcompass.co/reversing-the-decline-in-transformational-ide ) from earlier this year.
This is useful reading both for entrepreneurs and those public officials whose economic growth strategy is focused on entrepreneurship – which should be one of the key foundations of that strategy in our new economy.
© 2012 Norman Jacknis
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