New research: Entrepreneurship can be taught

In 1997, Nobel Laureate Kenneth Arrow suggested entrepreneurship might be shaped by so many random factors that public policy and education could never meaningfully influence it.

Quietly, researchers have been testing that claim ever since. This summer, a paper offered a clear rebuttal: Entrepreneurship education does work. Done well, it leads to more company formation, and more successful firms.

That matters. For all its romance, entrepreneurship is not just an uncontrollable social phenomenon. It is something we can cultivate, teach and scale. 

“We need more entrepreneurs,” Jonathan Ortmans, founder of the Global Entrepreneurship Network (GEN), told me. “We [ecosystem builders] have to do a better job.”

In the American system, entrepreneurship matters for three broad reasons: bringing invention to consumers, creating individual wealth and jumpstarting local economic dynamism. 

That last reason has gotten lots of backing in recent years. Each new business per 100 people adds $500 to a county’s average household income, according to GoDaddy research. Boosted entrepreneurship correlates to local poverty declines, lower income inequality and higher overall incomes. New businesses are also leading indicators of GDP growth. The type of business matters too: High-growth tech businesses played an outsized role in the post-pandemic entrepreneurship boom, per the Federal Reserve Bank.

The National Governors Association just released its new slate of priorities and boosting business starts and growth is a top priority.  Entrepreneurship is a public good, which regions, states and countries can increasingly shape. So-called “ecosystem building” is shaping economic development with this goal in mind. 

Good. Why, then, does Ortmans see storm clouds on the horizon?

The global mood: ‘Entrepreneurs are the new diplomats’

Ortmans’ Global Entrepreneurship Network is a pro–new business group that produces an international conference and oversees local programs it spreads around the world. It is one of several initiatives that spun out of the Kansas City-based Kauffman Foundation, which fueled generations of pro-entrepreneurship research and programming. Kauffman has made a hard pivot to focus entirely on Kansas City, which leaves a major opening in leadership. 

At GEN’s Global Entrepreneurship Congress in Indianapolis this summer, where 140 countries were represented, Ortmans presented a picture of stormy skies. That picture is backed up by the annual global entrepreneurship report that GEN produces with Startup Genome, a data consultancy.  Those storm clouds:

• Funding declines. Global ecosystem value, a count of startup valuations and exits, fell by a third in 2025, the first major drop in years. Latin America saw declines as steep as 45%. True, much of that is tied to higher interest rates, which disproportionately affect the high-growth, long-tail giants that skew any early-stage data. Still, it marks a pronounced shift from the 2010s.  
• Political headwinds. Nationalism and the withdrawal of public funding make cross-border collaboration harder. Politics aside, it’s without question the Trump administration has challenged the American system for funding science that leads to breakthrough invention. 
• Concentration risk. More than 90% of AI venture funding is concentrated in just the U.S. and China, raising fears of global imbalance. A decade after saying there was no AI bubble, this time OpenAI’s Sam Altman has acknowledged there could be.

But there’s also resilience and opportunity:

• Entrepreneurs thrive in uncertain environments; disruption is their fuel.
• Governments from Algeria to US states are creating ministries and offices of entrepreneurship, often staffed by former founders.
• AI and big data are driving extraordinary innovation, while “main street” entrepreneurship is also rising.

As Ortmans put it, “Entrepreneurs are the new diplomats.” When governments falter, founders step in to build connections, solve problems and test new ideas.

Why this matters for local leaders

If entrepreneurship can be taught and cultivated, then civic leaders have no excuse to sit back. 

Ortmans’ annual report sparks geographic rivalry by tracking regional performance around the world. Silicon Valley is firmly the global leader, but variation happens even among the top 20. My hometown of Philadelphia surprised many by rising to be among the top 15 in the world, and though Washington DC has slid, it remains one of the world’s most active.

All those top regions rely on high-growth outliers. This is less about lists than about overall performance, and intentionally developing the systems to encourage and maximize business creation and growth. 

Economic leaders like the gardening metaphor. Yet not every place lives it, instead waiting for healthy crops to grow among the untended weeds, rather than cultivating a string of seedlings. 

Such entrepreneurship support requires “invisible infrastructure,” as it was put recently by influential pro-entrepreneurship advocate and organizer Amy Beaird, who has a PhD in chemical engineering and helps facilitate the National Science Foundation’s Engines program.

This “invisible infrastructure” was defined by a recent Brookings report that describes connecting across industries and supporting a patchwork of approaches and programs (hence the ecosystem metaphor).

This is happening across the United States. In Louisiana, 30-year-old nonprofit Nexus has new leadership and bold plans. In Kansas, a statewide strategy focused on rural entrepreneurship is called Network Kansas. Next week, I’ll be in Montana speaking at the Headwater Tech Hub Summit, where advanced research and entrepreneurship engagement strategies are merging. 

Ortmans is encouraging similar efforts worldwide. The policy choices we make, the education programs we fund, and the ecosystems we nurture all directly influence whether people start and sustain new businesses. One tool is GEN’s Global Entrepreneurship Week, which happens the week before Thanksgiving every year. 

Arrow wasn’t wrong that entrepreneurship contains uncertainty. Worryingly, too many place-based economic development leaders and policymakers believe that means entrepreneurship can’t be developed at a place’s roots. 

Uncertainty is not the same as randomness. Every region tells a story, and entrepreneurship can be one of them. We can teach and support entrepreneurship, and we can build more of it. The only question is whether we choose to.