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Interesting thoughts. I get the sense that each generation worries that the one that will come after it will be worse off in some way. If I recall from my philosophy courses way back when, Plato was one of the first people who worried about this. Here's a link that may provide some optimism for you as some of the traits you worry about can also be seen as strengths:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/
nat...epreneurs_x.htm
Personally I think the biggest killers of entrepreneurship are complacency and structural constraints. The first is more the result of a culture of entitlements - the expectation of success without working for it - and I think you allude a bit to that here. But I think there's also a trial by fire type element that you've missed once people leave the cozy world of student-dom. Despite grade inflation, competition for spots at top schools is getting more fierce - as are the much valued jobs at the top of the food chain like finance and consulting. If students don't pick up resiliency as an emotional trait, they quickly learn that they get spit out. In effect, people are driven by incentives - we just have to make sure the incentives are the right ones.
Then we have to make sure that the second killer, structural impediments, to those who do innovate are minimized (e.g. higher taxes, red tape, etc). From what I've seen in Africa and Asia (I was born and raised in Canada but also worked for a period in NYC) - the entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well. It's the governments that are horrible heaping corruption, high taxes and red tape on successful entrepreneurs. And then if you don't play the game you don't grow... the correlation between economic growth (which I tend to think like yourself is often driven by entrepreneurs) and economic freedom is strong. Check out the Heritage Institute's Freedom Index and also the World Bank's Doing Business Index for comparison and you quickly see some of the factors are that drive economic growth.
Great comments and great article.
Another aspect that compounds the nontrepreneurial spirit is the current eveolution of the venture capital community, which has evolved with similar disfunctionality. The combination of (1) entitlement by name (2) a huge adversion to risk and potential failure (3) a desparate clinging to structure and process (4) a void in actual experience (much less experience in failure) and other similar traits to those you mentioned are all obviously plaguing the venture community. The result is that most VCs have become over-glorified and highly over-compensated bankers. Even worse, this same set of problems encouraged a mentality and course of action where VCs stifled the angel opportunties with a history of cram-downs. That, in turn, has had a huge impact on entrepreneurship. I have seen time and time again the remaining entrepreneurial people (including the few that entered and survived b-school) have lost faith in the financial institutions to support their efforts, discouraging them from even getting started. I'd be interested in your comments about that side of the table.
Clement, not sure if that article is unique to today or could be placed in any decade. It would be interesting to see the data on what percentage of this generation does entrepreneurial businesses versus prior generations.
Also I'm not sure if the competition for spots at the top schools is really that it's more competitive or that simply more students across the board are applying to these schools.
Thanks, Erin. Actually some of what you're talking about was covered in a blog post a few spots down by myself and those I linked to:
http://bernardmoon.blogspot.com/...s-and-
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