Beyond Entrepreneurship: Recognizing the Entrepreneurial Arc

Data gathered since 2008 points to a slowdown in business creation, leading to a nation-wide “startup deficit”: we need sustainable economic growth, but, although opportunities are there, concrete and predictable positive results have been increasingly elusive. Whose responsibility is it to address this problem? Suggestions for how to proceed include paying attention to demographic trends, recognizing that education can improve the rate and quality of new business creation, and therefore job creation, but each local ecosystem may need a unique approach, so how should this education be prepared and delivered, and to whom? What is the role of traditional higher education in this regard? Increasingly, universities may need to reexamine or expand their focus, and acknowledge their need to lobby for a renewed perception of their usefulness, perhaps changing role they play in evolving entrepreneurial ecosystems. Not only universities, but all of us should pay attention to the entrepreneurial arc.