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Growing up in an age when we are all largely creators as well as consumers of media, Gen Yers are unabashedly accustomed to creating on our own. And with easy and virtually free marketing via the internet, we are equally aware that what we create can get an appreciative audience beyond our friend group, town, country, even. It is perhaps not so surprising then that a whopping number of our interviewees over that past year have told us that their dream is to run a business of their own in the future. The reasons for that are plentiful, and hark back to my previous blog about the Gen Y desire to work for things greater than money, such as self-fulfillment, flexibility, social responsibility and, yes, freedom. But what is surprising is that American Gen Yers were not as keen on starting their own businesses are their European peers.
 As a European raised to a large extent in the US in a family that loves America and the American Dream, I have always been told that it is on the fertile soil of the “New World” that people are driven to start ventures of their own and, significantly, that it is also on that side of the Atlantic where you are most likely to have these ventures financed. Europe, on the other hand, has always been described to me as a territory of inflexibility where breaking out on your own is complicated by high taxation and complex regulation. What a surprise it was to me, then, to hear so few of the Americans claim to want to start something on their own. Especially when compared with, frankly, a majority of the Europeans! Either this means young Europeans are big dreamers but not big doers, or that we will see a huge upswing in European entrepreneurship in the future. I cannot claim to know, but the fact is that Europe seems to be fostering its youth to think outside the professional box.
This week the European Championship in Young Entrepreneurships is being held in Stockholm and is featured in an article in Svenska Dagbladet (Swedish daily) today, July 26th. The state-funded Swedish organization Ungt Företagsamhet (Young Entrepreneurship) is organizing the event that features young entrepreneurs from all over Europe. The Finish team is exhibiting interior decorating made with recycled metals while an all girls team from Malta have created a Maltese (the language spoken by the island’s 500, 000 inhabitants) T9 dictionary for mobile phones and are currently in negotiations with mobile operators. The Swedish contribution this year is Henrik Giver’s Condom Boxer. “I think girls like it if you come well-prepared,” the young businessman says of his product, a boxer brief with a special pocket for condoms conveniently located on the front. Also on location in Stockholm are eighty observers from Canada and the United States who are there in anticipation of the first such event of its kind to be held in North America next year. The competition hints at the same thing that our interviews indicated: Europe appears ahead of American in encouraging young entrepreneurship. The US is a pioneer society whose guiding words are freedom and opportunity. In the previous centuries, Europeans flooded American shores to create new lives for themselves, and new business ventures. Now, Europe is in many ways driving a pioneer campaign of its own: that of the European Union. European citizens have the option to study and work in over twenty countries. Meanwhile, America continues to make work vias all the more elusive even to high-skilled applicants. As Richard Florida warns in "The Flight of the Creative Class," American success is largely built on the historic ability to attract and cultivate foreign talent, and now, as the economy becomes increasingly global and so-called "creative capitals" spring up in new places on the map, that talent seems to be looking elsewhere. Perhaps it is time to speak of a European frontier? - Astri Read the full article in SVD here. Photo by Giampaolo Squarcina on Flickr under Creative Commons License.
Readers have left 2 comments.  2. UntitledAstri, UnregisteredOur interviews were, as I wrote, very surprising to me since I expected the American interviewees to be seething with start-up desires. I am so glad to hear that my impressions may have been wrong! I very much hope that both sides of the Atlantic will experience a rise in young entrepreneurship as Gen Y enters the professional world. 1. Professor of EconomicsMichael Claudon, Unregistered How about Apple, Google, Microsoft and Dell Computer. Guess what? All four were conceived and launched by young American college drop-outs.
From Fortune Magazine: In an era of widespread disenchantment with the often bureaucratic, scandal-ridden world of big corporations, more students believe that building a successful startup is the way to go. A recent poll Junior Achievement Worldwide in Colorado Springs outfit that teaches students about entrepreneurship revealed that 69% want to start a business, an increase of five percentage points since last year. The Harvard Business School just found that 67% of MBAs it surveyed had started a firm after competing in its business-plan competitions.
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