The United States is much derided around the world today, but in the area of entrepreneurship we are still the model. The European Union's recent report on "Helping to create an entrepreneurial culture" testifies of that fact:

The image of entrepreneurs as positive role models has never been as strong in Europe as in the US. Becoming an entrepreneur has long been seen as an unsafe and risky option, not particularly appealing and less socially rewarding than other, more traditional professions. The educational systems have not in the past been geared towards the development of entrepreneurship and self-employment, the final goal of the educational path being rather to produce employees working in a big company or in public administration.

This is a fascinating document, which raises important questions about the creation of entrepreneurial culture.

I am headed for Europe next week, and among the stops is the Babson-Kauffman Entrepreneurship Research Conference, being held this year in Glasgow. Among other things, I expect to see a lot of European academics who study entrepreneurship in countries that are not very entrepreneurial. A few years ago, a friend from Finland commented that Finns study entrepreneurship to death, but ultimately do nothing. To me the problem seems more complex: what exactly is to be done?

The premise of the EU report is that most entrepreneurs are made, not born, and the purpose of the report is to encourage efforts toward developing education in entrepreneurship. This includes "promoting the development of personal qualities that are relevant to entrepreneurship, such as creativity, spirit of initiative, risk-taking and responsibility; raising students’ awareness of self-employment as a career option ...; and providing the business skills that are needed in order to start a new venture." Will this work in any meaningful sense? Well, it isn't clear to me that public primary and secondary school teachers are effective entrepreneurship instructors, but I like the aspiration. One of the reasons I feel a sense of mission about entrepreneurship is that entrepreneurs in the mold contemplated by this report are independent and self-directed, not mere cogs in a great machine. Ultimately, entrepreneurship is about leading a better life, not just making money.

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