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

Music downloads and piracy

Pirates are stealing 19 out of 20 music downloads, according to current research.

There are a number of negative consequences, both for artists and companies, large and small - amongst these that global sales of debut albums have fallen by over 75% since 2003. So it’s not just Paul McCartney and Lady Gaga and EMI and Warner who are suffering.

Of course, there have been similar situations in the past. For example, when public libraries grew in popularity in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the publishing industry had to come up with a radical new way of protecting revenues and remunerating authors, resulting in the adoption of the Public Lending Right programme after the second world war.

The music industry needs to stop whinging about the current situation - and get down to inventing and implementing a new solution which fits with the world as it is now. Bleating won’t solve the problem.