Entrepreneurship: A Critical Insider View From The Intellectual Capital Perspective

The overoptimistic and often ideology-laden utilization of entrepreneur-ship-related “solutions” sharply contrast with their low average success rate. This is true for many countries, regions and otherwise defined sociotopes. Probably, the superficial impression of success of entrepreneurial start-ups vastly exaggerates the true success rate in even the most developed countries. There may also be a tendency to deliberately avoid clearly posing and critically analyzing the problem. The reason for this is that a multitude of entrepreneurship-boosting programs, which are profitable for some societal players, do not necessarily lead to an authentic, self-sustaining entrepreneurship culture. While the present authors are by no means opposed to the formation of a long term genuine entrepreneurial culture, we chose here to shed light on the drawdown of naively investing into entrepreneurship programs. This is discussed along different dimensions and from different socio-economic perspectives. The paper is mainly theoretical and conceptual in nature although it also draws on long experience with different aspects of organizing and running entrepreneurial training projects. We finally pro¬po¬se to reposition entrepreneurship in terms of evasive and requisite actions, both in a social and in a technological sense. We point to the prolific nature of using regional Intellectual Capital as a guide and proxy concerning the formation of a long term entrepreneurial culture.