Expanding the Entrepreneur Class - Harvard Business Review

Expanding the Entrepreneur Class - Harvard Business Review: "The world needs more entrepreneurs: They make innovation real and advance what Brink Lindsey, of the Kauffman Foundation, has called the “frontier economy.” If their ranks are too thin, it is a failure of society—particularly because the knowledge and skills of a successful entrepreneur can be taught.

Indeed, in the recent rise of formal education in entrepreneurship we see these superheroes of creative destruction finally being given their due. The number of U.S. schoolchildren exposed to entrepreneurship as a career choice has grown rapidly. At least 600,000 college students take a class in entrepreneurship every year. Ten years ago their number was negligible.

The problem is that we have nothing to show for it. If the resources devoted to teaching entrepreneurship have increased, but business start-ups have fallen by a third (from a longtime average of 600,000), one might even think that formal education in entrepreneurship is working against us. Perhaps it’s no surprise that some of our most famous business geniuses haven’t had the patience to collect diplomas. Could it be that we lack imagination about how to teach them?"

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