If You Are So Smart, Why Aren't You an Entrepreneur? (Study)
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If You Are So Smart, Why Aren't You an Entrepreneur? (Study)
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Re: If You Are So Smart, Why Aren't You an Entrepreneur? (Study)
#2Jumping straight to the conclusion...
"The same individual has a 30% higher return to general ability when active as an entrepreneur than when working as an employee. Nevertheless, the resulting earnings are higher as an entrepreneur than as an employee only for the upper echelon of the general ability distribution. This suggests that, if the choice for entrepreneurship hinges on expected earnings, only the smartest people become entrepreneurs. However, as indicated by the results in Table A2 of the Appendix, general ability is not a factor that affects people’s occupational choice. In fact, there is some negative effect of general ability but it is not significant."
"These results suggest that, again if occupational choices are based on expected earnings differentials, people with high levels of math, technical and social abilities become entrepreneurs, whereas people with relatively high levels of clerical and language abilities become wage employees."
Re: If You Are So Smart, Why Aren't You an Entrepreneur? (Study)
#3The abstract didn't mention risk tolerance but I imagine that probably ranks high for entrepreneurial traits.
Re: If You Are So Smart, Why Aren't You an Entrepreneur? (Study)
#4Maybe I'm not an entrepreneur -because- I am so smart.
See, I know what I want. And I really, really like my free time. Money doesn't matter nearly so much to me as it seems to for most people.
So the answer to that question is:
Because you don't know me.
Re: If You Are So Smart, Why Aren't You an Entrepreneur? (Study)
#5Maybe I'm not an entrepreneur -because- I am so smart. See, I know what I want. And I really, really like my free time. Money doesn't matter nearly so much to me as it seems to for most people. So the answer to that question is: Because you don't know me.
See, this study does not claim to know you. It claims statistical properties, correlations. By definition, this paints an incomplete, simplified picture.
The title is admittedly rather attention-grabby, but I did not make it up, I copied it from the study (and truncated it to fit in 80 characters).
Re: If You Are So Smart, Why Aren't You an Entrepreneur? (Study)
#6The Lazear Jack Of All Trades paper cited is available at http://faculty-gsb.stanford.edu/lazear/Personal/PDFs/Balance... for those following up references
Re: If You Are So Smart, Why Aren't You an Entrepreneur? (Study)
#7I think eventually most people will be entrepreneurs. More and more things will be automated, decreasing the need for labor and making it easier to build value by combining the results.
For example, once robotic transportation becomes a reality, virtual assembly lines will be possible, giving entrepreneurs new tools and lower costs. Something people previously moving things from point A to B could take advantage of to create products and services at suddenly lower costs.
In the same way the Internet made it possible to distribute digital products world wide, low cost robotic transportation will make it cheap to combine physical things in interesting new ways.
All of this will make being an employee less rewarding and entrepreneurship even more appealing.
Instead of being a cog, more people will be buying cogs and building machines that satisfy even more human needs.
Re: If You Are So Smart, Why Aren't You an Entrepreneur? (Study)
#8Really, the highest earning "occupations" (or most prestigious) change as time goes:
- in the 1800s many smart people became authors or poets.
- in the 1950 many became physicists
- around 2000, many became entrepreneurs (or even venture capitalists)
Purely macro-economic reasons can dictate, that sometimes it is best to be an entrepreneur (say, in times of "under-investment"), sometimes a consultant and yet again, sometimes an employee (in times of "over-investment" in a sector)
Re: If You Are So Smart, Why Aren't You an Entrepreneur? (Study)
#9I think eventually most people will be entrepreneurs. More and more things will be automated, decreasing the need for labor and making it easier to build value by combining the results. For example, once robotic transportation becomes a reality, virtual assembly lines will be possible, giving entrepreneurs new tools and lower costs. Something people previously moving things from point A to B could take advantage of t…
It seems great until you understand what economies of scale mean. A big group is likely to ultimately win over several groups collectively of same size.
However, people with knowledge that computers can't yet automate; will be pretty valuable (Try online self-diagnosis..).
Re: If You Are So Smart, Why Aren't You an Entrepreneur? (Study)
#10The abstract didn't mention risk tolerance but I imagine that probably ranks high for entrepreneurial traits.
Critical thinking?
Can you build me the next facebook? I can't say what it is unless you sign this heavily-one-sided NDA.