IS THE NEW ENTREPRENEURIAL ERA OVER

The United States experienced an outburst of entrepreneurial energy in the early 1970s that flooded through the 1980s. But, why did the outb urst occur? And, why did it occur when it did? Long term trends includ ing the changing role of women and the two-income family, new technolo gy, lower costs of business entry, and a supportive culture propped a general rise in entrepreneurial activity. However, economic turbulence , the baby boom generation and the residual of 1960s attitudes were th e catalysts. Whether that outburst of entrepreneurial energy will cont inue through the 1990s is doubtful. The formation of a new enterprise demands that an individual(s) identify a market opportunity and assemb le the resources to exploit it. The act requires entrepreneurial alert ness to discover the opportunity, creativity to fashion a response, an d technical competence (and frequently imagination) to organize the re sources in a way that will materialize the idea. The result of this pr ocess is an economic creation known as a business. The idea that busin ess formation is a creative act may offend some. Creative endeavor is customarily associated with the arts or technological invention. The i dea that all business formations are creative acts may test their tole rance further. Bill Gates may have exhibited great creativity founding Microsoft, one might argue, but what about the fellow who opened up a nother pizza parlor down the block? Gates produced scads of new softwa re that revolutionized computing and developed a company employing mor e than 10,000 people in just a few years. Microsoft remains a software giant, more concerned with anti-trust issues than survival. The local pizza parlor, however, may have emulated every other pie shop in town and survived only a few months to boot. Yet, I would argue the format ion of both were creative endeavors. Most new enterprises are not spec tacularly successful nor are they spectacularly creative. There are hu ndreds of thousands of pizza parlors for every Bill Gates. Still, that is not usual in any area of initiative. Monet's landscapes exhibit mo re creativity than do the thousands of landscapes hung at local art sh ows. But because local art is not spectacular nor perhaps even very go od doesn't mean it is not creative effort. It simply means the artist was not very creative and perhaps not even technically accomplished. T he same is true with our pizza parlor. The founder may not have been v ery creative; he may not have been technically very competent; and the business's formation may have been the last creative act associated w ith the firm, Nonetheless, for at least one brief moment, the founder flashed a spark of creative power. New business ventures, therefore, b ecomes one measure of national creative effort. It is obviously not th e only measure. Moreover, it is a measure of volume, not necessarily a measure of quality. But using business formations as a measure of cre ativity can help us understand the direction we are headed as a nation . And it demonstrates that the United States has experienced a remarka ble outpouring of creative energy in the last two decades, at least in terms of entrepreneurial endeavor.