
The Entrepreneurship Industry and the Rise of the Veblenian Entrepreneur - telotortium
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3479042&utm_campaign=Matt%27s%20Thoughts%20In%20Between&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Revue%20newsletter
======
telotortium
Abstract:

> What is driving the declining quality of innovation-driven entrepreneurship?
> In this paper, we argue the growing entrepreneurship industry is an
> important yet overlooked explanation. This rapidly growing industry has
> transformed the nature of entrepreneurship and encouraged a particular form
> of low-quality entrepreneurship. It has done so by leveraging the Ideology
> of Entrepreneurialism to mass-produce and mass-market products that make
> possible what we term Veblenian Entrepreneurship. This is entrepreneurship
> pursued primarily as a form of conspicuous consumption. Aside from lowering
> average entrepreneurial quality, Veblenian Entrepreneurship has a range of
> (short-run) positive and (medium and long-run) negative effects for both
> individuals and society at large. We argue that the rise of the Veblenian
> Entrepreneur has contributed to creating an increasingly Untrepreneurial
> Economy. That is an economy which superficially appears innovation-driven
> and dynamic, but is actually rife with inefficiencies and unable to generate
> economically meaningful growth through innovation.

I was hoping this paper would have some good stats about this potential
phenomenon of "fake" entrepreneurship, but it seems to be a fluffed-up blog
post with a few more citations for the most part. Still a good thing to
investigate in the future though. I did find this quote striking:

> Freeman et al (2019) found that engagement in entrepreneurship (irrespective
> of failure) was associated with higher levels of depression, ADHD, substance
> abuse and bipolar disorder, while only 24% of entrepreneurs have no mental
> health issues.

