Are Americans Too Old to be Entrepreneurs?

The Scholl Chair is pleased to announce a new book in partnership with the Fraser Institute:  Demographics and Entrepreneurship:  Mitigating the Effects of an Aging Population.

This book looks at one of the most important issues facing the United States today – our ability to lead the world in innovation.  Our ability to come up with new ideas and turn them into new technologies and products is unmatched in the world, and it is critical for our future global competitiveness that we keep it that way.  The U.S. is not the low cost producer of many products, so a lot of our economic strength rests on developing products and capturing market share ahead of everybody else.  In other words, we need constantly to run faster, and with 95% of the world’s consumers outside our borders, we need to run faster globally, not just domestically. 

Our global leadership is continuously under challenge from many directions, most notably China right now, and if we lose our lead, it might well be for good.  That means we need to pay close attention to getting innovation right.  A standard principle in that regard is the need to protect our intellectual property from theft or forced transfer.  Indeed, the next publication the Scholl Chair will be releasing will be our own study of Section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930, which empowers the International Trade Commission to exclude imports that infringe our patents.

Before we can protect our intellectual property, however, we need to have some to protect – it is the ongoing creation of new IP that is the key to innovation.  And essential to that is the entrepreneur – the creator/disruptor who thinks outside the box, sees new possibilities and turns them into realities, and the coordinator who sees profit opportunities in new ideas and makes them happen.

Demographics and Entrepreneurship is about making sure we have lots of those people, and its basic conclusion is that we may not, that entrepreneurship is a province of the young, and that aging populations like ours will see a steady decline in entrepreneurs.  From that conclusion, which is documented with detailed demographic data, the book goes on to discuss what we can do about it, focusing on a range of policies – tax, regulatory, immigration, financial markets and education – that collectively can stimulate entrepreneurship in our economy. 

Not everyone will agree with every policy suggestion, but collectively they do provide a roadmap for maintaining our competitiveness, and we would do well to study the recommendations closely, as the stakes are high.

Demographics and Entrepreneurship is available online and can be downloaded here.

CSIS Experts

William Alan Reinsch

Senior Adviser and Scholl Chair in International Business

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