The barriers to creative enterprise and entrepreneurship
Getting to, and getting off, the starting line are separate issues
1. Getting to the starting line
You’ve probably heard of the research on ‘America’s Lost Einsteins’. The research author summarised the findings:
“There are very large gaps in innovation by income, race, and gender… [but] these gaps don’t seem to be about differences in ability to innovate—they seem directly related to environment.”
The research linked early childhood test scores with patent applications as an indicator of innovation. It found that children in rich households are 10 times as likely to become inventors than children in poor households. There were similar results on the other bases of gender and race.
The amazing part of the research is the finding that “exposure to innovation substantially increases the chances that children become inventors.”
I believe the data would tell a similar story in the world of creative enterprise and entrepreneurship: that socioeconomic factors and other forms of marginalisation are massive barriers to entry. This is especially true considering that new projects and initiatives can involve financial risk, which makes wealth (or lack thereof) an even more powerful lever.
Of course, the lack of wealth and opportunity can be the driving force for creators and entrepreneurs, but that likely applies to a small minority. The bottom line is that wealth and privilege are huge advantages for those contemplating starting their own venture. As Andrew Yang writes:
“Too many potentially important companies never come to fruition because startup culture—intentionally or not—marginalizes women, underrepresented minorities, and first-generation college students.”
While hard to quantify, it seems safe to say that many young potential creators, entrepreneurs and orginators simply never get to the starting line due to the lack of opportunity, wealth, connections or other privileges. As the maxim goes, "Talent is equally distributed, opportunity is not."
2. Getting off the start line
For those who can get to the start line, there are a different set of challenges. As Gary Chou remarks:
"...there’s this gravitational pull towards realizing your own aspirations, most of which don’t have anything to do with your day job. ...But they haven’t been taught how to express and realize their own ideas."
This is the problem of capabilities. Doing something for yourself — whether that is a creative project, community event, media production, social venture or tech start-up — is extremely difficult. And it likely involves different capabilities than those traditionally developed earning paychecks in more established organisations.
I’m a huge fan of Gary Chou’s work in partnership with Chris Xu. They run the Post-Industrial Design School which includes crafting and teaching the $1k Challenge. I’ll likely expand on their insights in future, suffice to say, I’ve found it to be the most inspiring, thoughtful and intentional model for guiding young people through an entrepreneurial experience that I’ve come across.
While many learning and education programs focus on specific skills, Gary and Christina have learned that the two most important factors in bringing creative projects to fruition relate to much softer capabilities: navigating uncertainty and building networks. This completely aligns with my experience over the last 20 years across a range of projects, communities and ventures. Again, I’ll come back to this in the near future.
The Wrap - any major barriers missing?
I’ve gone down many rabbit-holes researching this space as it is multi-faceted with many related variables and factors. I will continue to pinpoint the specific problems I want to tackle in this space (not to mention for whom we seek to help). For now, I believe that the two macro-barriers to young people pursuing creative, entrepreneurial and self-directed futures revolve around:
Restricted access - either on the basis of socioeconomic, gender, race or proximity barriers
Capability constraints - not having the 'soft’ skill capabilities to tackle self-initiated projects and activities
Others might have a different mental framework for thinking about this, so I’d love to hear from you.
Reading List
America’s Lost Einsteins (The Atlantic)
The only startup founders who can embrace failure are the ones privileged enough to survive it (Quartz)
Silicon Valley’s Achilles’ heel threatens to topple its supremacy in innovation (CNBC)
Post-Industrial Design School (Gary Chou and Chris Xu)