The Wall Street Journal has some interesting things to say about The Next American Frontier:
The most compelling statistic of all? Half of all new college graduates now believe that self-employment is more secure than a full-time job. Today, 80% of the colleges and universities in the U.S. now offer courses on entrepreneurship; 60% of Gen Y business owners consider themselves to be serial entrepreneurs, according to Inc. magazine. Tellingly, 18 to 24-year-olds are starting companies at a faster rate than 35 to 44-year-olds. And 70% of todays high schoolers intend to start their own companies, according to a Gallup poll.
An upcoming wave of new workers in our society will never work for an established company if they can help it. To them, having a traditional job is one of the biggest career failures they can imagine.
I don’t know if I believe those statistics on high school and college students looking to start companies. But even if those numbers are half-true, it marks quite a shift in the eight years since I entered the working world. Most people in 2000 still made the traditional choice between continuing onto graduate and professional schools, or getting a job at a well-known company where they could get good experience, training, and start paying back school loans.
The dot-com economy started to change that, with more smaller companies in the mix and a handful of student entrepreneurs. (My favorite career fair memory is seeing a few student startup guys I knew setup a folding table right next to IBM’s massive booth.) The expected length of employment had already dropped to 2-3 years; perhaps seeing that played out has made the next generation prefer being their own boss to an endless parade of strangers. (Even without changing companies much, I’ve averaged 1 per year.)
What I think has really changed attitudes, though, is the shift to a more micro-friendly service and information economy. Anyone can start an eBay store, write a Facebook application, or sell photos online with a much smaller investment of money and time than in the past world of bricks and mortar. Of course, it’s still tough to start a successful, profitable business and grow it to be your primary means of support. Hopefully the serial entrepreneurs polled will get some good tips as part of their formal education and keep at it until it clicks.
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