Entrepreneurship and age

Interesting and provocative article by “Schumpeter” in The Economist* turning on its head the idea that entrepreneurs are predominantly the young.

Among the examples he cites of creativity stretching well into “Third Age” are The Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney and Leonard Cohen.

Then, digging into recent research, Schumpeter says that in the USA “twice as many successful founders [of start-ups] are over 50 as under 25, and twice as many over 60 as under 20.”

And he says that research shows that “the highest rate of entrepreneurial activity [is] among people aged 55 to 64 – and the lowest rate among the Google generation of 20 to 34 year-olds.”

So what might we conclude?

1.That experience coupled with creativity is critically important to successful entrepreneurship, and that

2.Maybe it’s more a generational thing more than an age thing. After all, the examples he quotes all come from the 1960s generation that considered creativity to be of the essence. Talkin' 'bout my generation. Schumpeter doesn’t seem to have considered this possibility.

Time will tell!

* http://www.economist.com/node/21548135

Back to the Five Bells

After a trip last week to see my academic supervisor at Goldsmiths in New Cross, I walked down to the Old Kent Road ‒ to the Five Bells pub.

My brother David and I, together with a small gang of friends, used to go there to drink beer and to hear the live music. It was 1964ish, so you can imagine what kind of sounds they were.

The pub was always packed and the regular house band stoked up a storm. Mostly the feeling was of shared bonhomie. At least, that’s how I recall it. They made a big impression on me, and certainly had an influence on my own style of performing in subsequent years.

The Five Bells is much as it was nearly fifty years ago, but there doesn’t seem to be any live music there these days. The stage is still in its place (above), but no one plays on it any more.

It seemed such an adventure in the ′60s, to drive down to deepest New Cross in South-East London on a dark winter’s evening, across the river from Kensington, where we were living in genteel poverty at the time.

Little did I know then that I would spend so many years living just a short way up the hill in lovely Blackheath.