Here’s the thing that still puzzles me: We all know entrepreneurship drives innovation, creates jobs, and fuels economies. We know that. But, it’s still not a core part of how we educate, how we train, how we think about the future of learning and work.
Today’s guest is Jonathan Ortmans, who is, in my opinion, one of the loudest, clearest voices pushing to change that.
As the founder of the Global Entrepreneurship Network, he is one of the few true global thinkers, leaders, and doers when it comes to promoting entrepreneurship as a means of both economic and human development.
And it all started as a result of his own entrepreneurial journey. After starting and exiting several companies, he recognized the need to encourage and support entrepreneurship as a means of “economic gardening.” And, as an entrepreneur, he decided to do something about it.
In this episode, we talk about ecosystems, policy, culture, and most importantly—how we activate the potential in ordinary people to solve problems and create value.
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Listen to the podcast here
Cultivating Entrepreneurial Mindsets On A Global Scale With Jonathan Ortmans
The Entrepreneurial Paradox: Why Aren’t We Teaching This?
Everyone, welcome to the show. Here’s the thing that puzzles me. We all know that entrepreneurship drives innovation, creates jobs, and fuels economies. We all know that, and yet it’s still not a core part of how we think about education, how we train people, how we think about the future of learning and work. Our guest is Jonathan Ortmans, who is, in my opinion, one of the loudest, clearest voices pushing to change all that. As the founder of the Global Entrepreneurship Network, he is one of the few true global thinkers, leaders, and doers when it comes to promoting entrepreneurship as a means of both economic and human development.
It all started as a result of his own entrepreneurial journey. After starting and exiting several companies, Jonathan recognized the need to encourage and support entrepreneurship as a means of economic gardening, in his terms, which I love. As an entrepreneur, he decided to do something about it. In this episode, we’re going to talk about ecosystems, policy, culture, and most importantly, how we activate the potential in ordinary people to solve problems and create value. It’s a rich conversation, and I hope you enjoy it. Let’s dive in.
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Jonathan, thanks for being on my show. I really appreciate it.
It’s great to be here, Gary. Thanks for including me. It’s awesome to see all the great things going on, and glad to be a part of it.
I consider you one of a handful of global thinkers in this space in entrepreneurial development. That’s why I’m excited to have you on this show. To me, Jonathan, I still scratch my head when I think about the impact of entrepreneurship is well known. I still don’t understand why this isn’t like embedded in education and more thought about more prominently in the world, and I see you as a leader in that. I know your background in economics. Do I have that right?
Yes, that’s right.
Tell me, how did you get into this game? How did you start the Global Entrepreneurship Network?
From Economics To Ecosystems: Jonathan Ortmans’ Journey
First of all, Gary, you are very kind to say thanks for having me. If I’ve done any global thinking on this, I’m just one of many, and there have been great people who’ve led the way before me. I got involved in this for a few reasons. First of all, I was born in Europe, in the United Kingdom. When I moved to the US, one of the things I loved about the culture of this country was the sense that you could create your own future.
Cultivating Entrepreneurial Mindset: When I moved to the US, one of the things I loved about the culture was the sense that you could create your own future.
There was a sense of optimism and then self-motivation. It was about you waking up, saying, “It’s up to me to do it. I cannot depend upon others.” I remember when I was graduating from college, I had so many people saying to me, “I’m so mad at the government. Why?” It’s because they haven’t got me a job. I’m going to graduate, and there are no jobs. They haven’t delivered a job for me. I was always under the impression that it was part of the American culture.
Of course, that really introduced me to the entrepreneurial spirit, the pioneering spirit, the fact that you could learn to have initiative, learn to be more self-actuating, so forth. That was the first thing that I’ve always been a sort of half-full person in the sense that I’ve always looked to opportunities and fun and the positive side of things rather than dwelling too much on the burdens we must bear.
The second thing was I got into space because I think as an economist, I recognized that there was very little senior-level scholarship among, as I say, prominent economists on the role of entrepreneurship in building economies. They often call that the Harberger triangle. Meaning it’s such a small piece of all the economic theory.
I was influenced very early on by the likes of Bob Leighton and Carl Schramm, some of the thinkers who were trying to drive scholarship into the space and elevate the level of attention it was getting to some of those inadequacies, I think, in economic research. Finally, the thing that got me involved is I had not only been involved in starting and exiting selling two companies, so I had some experience of what it takes to actually take a risk and do something, one in the UK, one in the US.
As a result of that, one of the things that I then built was a non-profit organization that was focused on public dialogue. How do we get more of the public involved in some of the issues they care about? One of the issues they always cared about was jobs and economic growth. They always cared about their local economies. I built and ran an organization that used to hold public forums. It was actually called the Public Forum Institute.
For members of Congress across the country, for about 70% of the House and Senate members, Republicans and Democrats, we used to facilitate these dialogues and debates around how do you build the economy? In those very early years, there was absolutely no attention given to the word entrepreneur. Someone started talking about economic gardening.
It’s not just about how I get companies to come in. How do I get companies to bring their employees here? It was about poaching from other regions. It was about how to start something fresh and grow it here from the bottom up. That really got me excited about the fact that this was both in economic theory and in practical life in the development of our economies and our job strategies as a nation.
I felt like this was really an area where we needed to do more work. It’s very much facilitated by the Kauffman Foundation. Coming along at the right time, I was able to really jump into this field with both arms and both legs, do it as a nonprofit, do it as someone interested in the field and the theory. Everything from ecosystem building to how we enable the right kind of environment as opposed to only having an entry into the field, which is true for many, as an investor or as an entrepreneur.
Everything from ecosystem building to creating the right kind of environment matters — it’s not just about entering the field as an investor or entrepreneur. Share on XThat’s so interesting. Not easy to unpack, but worthy of unpacking. Was it Schumpeter who first started talking about this? Was he the first guy that the first known economist started talking about entrepreneurship as like creative destruction?
I don’t know if it was the first. He certainly set the most well-recognized, early thing.
Managerial Vs. Entrepreneurial Thinking: A Fundamental Conflict
I think that entrepreneurship is still largely mysterious to us because we are so steeped in managerial culture. The assumptions inherent in managerial thinking are in direct conflict with entrepreneurship. Does that make any sense to you?
This is most evident, Gary, if you look at, for example, universities, and I agree with you 100%. When we first started thinking about how to teach entrepreneurship. Of course, but entrepreneurs were deemed to it happened in the business schools. It was quite quickly recognized that what we were really talking about, which was the process of ideation, of testing ideas, iterating on those, forming teams, the notions of creativity and risk, wasn’t something that was embedded in a business school.
Business school was going to teach you how to manage your skills, as you said. It’s going to teach you how to actually run an existing large company. I have several friends at Harvard Business School, who I remember looking at what they did after Harvard Business School. They went straight to become CEOs of mid-sized companies, and their mission was to grow that company. They were already managing an employee workforce of 300 or 400 people. These were established companies. These weren’t new companies. Thinking in the past, you are a hundred percent correct. It’s been embedded in this notion of management rather than birthing the new.
That’s really interesting to me, because what I’ve teased out in my interviews with all these entrepreneurs is that the attitudes and skills required to discover an opportunity are almost entirely distinct from those required to exploit it.
Cultivating Entrepreneurial Mindset: The process of ideation, testing, iteration, teamwork, and embracing creativity and risk wasn’t something traditionally embedded in business schools.
You’re 100% correct.
The business school comes along after an idea has been validated and confirmed to be scalable. That’s when we need those skills. As far as I can tell, the opportunity discovery process, like everyone, needs those skills.
I couldn’t agree with you more. As I think Gary’s work has played out and laid out very effectively. These are skills that are going to be applied well beyond the idea of just creating a company, but which go to emphasize even more that entrepreneurial skills are not just about managing an existing company. A hundred percent completely different skill set in my book because then you’re a lot more into understanding that a lot of the technical management skills as opposed to the creativity skills required in understanding how to mitigate risk in those early years.
Small business development centers are guilty of the same crime. People show up at a small business development center, and they’re told the right business plans to go find debt capital, but there’s no real discovery involved. They sort of default to teaching managerial things rather than discovery skills. I think that’s an important piece of the puzzle to sort of suss out the two entirely different disciplines.
You’re 100% correct. A lot of the entities, rather like, for example, there are a lot of these mentoring programs. Bless their heart. There are a lot of CEOs who will retire and give back. I want to go to mentor companies, but it is a very different skill set. I always tell entrepreneurs, find what skill sets you need a mentor for. It may be the multiple mentors, and this person is going to be particularly good at the “managerial skills.” This person will help me think through this much more lateral thinking phase of how I deal with uncertainty, risk, and how I am anticipating opportunities in new ways.
Find what skillsets you need a mentor for. Share on XEconomic Gardening: Cultivating Growth From The Ground Up
I love that, Jonathan. I want to come back to a term you use, like economic gardening. That’s like sort of ecosystem building is another way of saying that. Do I have that right?
I think that’s true. No, I think actually economic gardening for me, and it’s not a term I created, it’s just one I noticed was starting to be used by economic developers in the early years. It’s more of a term of saying, so to speak, maybe the best analogy, because it’s around gardening is rather than hiring a company to come in and put your turf down for you. You’re going to actually put the grass seed there and grow it yourself. You’re going to come up with the like talent and ideas and opportunity recognition, and then you’re going to create and build it, rather than I’m just bringing it in.
I think the difference with ecosystem building is that ecosystem building is very similar in the sense that you are creating the right culture and community and values and principles that would allow people to thrive in an environment where you are trying to grow new firms, you’re gardening new ones. That process is more. Have I got the right culture and ecosystem support elements that are going to remove the barriers to their success?
I like that, Jonathan. The cultural aspects, particularly, and I think people who don’t live in our space, the general public, feel like we default to trait-based assumptions when it comes to the underlying causes of entrepreneurial behavior. Entrepreneurs are somehow great men who are born with some scientifically unfathomable abilities, and we just need to find them and support them. What I hear you saying when you refer to culture is that it’s not quite that. That we’ve got to create the cultural conditions that make this normal and regular, and that we support this behavior. Do I have that right?
Yes, absolutely. Here’s the thing. The question is, how much can you predict what characteristics in a human being are going to result in them being a successful entrepreneur? I’ll never forget, in Europe, this was a popular trend, commissioning analysis and research so we can work out what the characteristics of citizens are that we want to look for when we decide whether to give them money to start a company. First of all, they were like, the only reason anybody would start a company is if you gave them money to do it. I’m like, “That’s not the way we think in the United States.”
We’ll start a company because they’re curious about fixing a problem or they have some ambition, and so forth. The interesting thing is that it’s less about the characteristics of the individual and it’s more about the characteristics of the community. It’s not about do they have X skill sets? There’s definitely, I’d say, entrepreneurial skills that you can have that are going to allow you to take those things on. I don’t think it’s genetic. I don’t think it’s inbred. “That person, therefore, they’ve got this, and this gene. Therefore, they’d be a good bet for us.”
I’ve looked at the literature. It just doesn’t hold up. The trait-based assumptions of psychologists have been trying for years to correlate dispositional traits with entrepreneurial tendencies. It just doesn’t really hold up at all. I agree with you. It gets really wonky, really quickly, because how are you defining entrepreneur? Is that right?
Redefining Entrepreneurship: It’s Not Just About Inventing
The wheels start to fall off the wagon because you have to put a specific definition on an entrepreneur. When you look at a typical entrepreneur, number one, they’re not inventing anything new. The vast preponderance doesn’t invent anything new. They’re starting with a couple of hundred or a couple of thousand dollars. They’re building a company. What is that? United States, 89% of all businesses have nine employees or fewer.
Yes.
Part of the challenge is that we need to redefine entrepreneurship, like people were thinking of it in this limited way. I want to go back to the gardening thing for a second, because my theory, Jonathan, is that non-entrepreneurial behavior is learned. That not everyone wants to start a business per se, but we’re all born with this self-actualizing tendency that we’re all born with the innate proclivity to be innovative and entrepreneurial.
That is to pursue our interests and abilities in ways that create value for other people. To hit on the cultural thing again, I gave a talk at the Harvard Human Flourishing Program a couple of months ago. When I walked into the building, William James Hall, there was a quote from James right in the lobby, and it said something to the effect of “The community needs the entrepreneurial impulse of the individual.”
The community needs the impulse of the individual in order to thrive. Without the support of the community, the impulse will die away. That sort of speaks to sort of economic gardening. If we don’t recognize and value this behavior, I feel like there are a lot of people who have this capacity, but they won’t exercise it because they don’t think it’s useful or valuable to the community.
You’re right. There’s no question about it. Whether you think of them as communities, ecosystems, economies, whatever label you put on it, it’s a term for a collection of people. If you have people who inherently don’t have that initiative, or it has been squashed for some reason, then you’ve got nothing. Having enough of those individual drivers, impulsive people, is very important.
When we got going with Jen, we sort of built our global nonprofit around the world off a campaign called Global Entrepreneurship Week. The very spirit of GW was how do we get more people to consider the path of entrepreneurship to wake up and say, “Maybe there might be something for me in this.” Even to this day, GW for me is all about how do you reach your neighbors? How do you reach your school friends?
How do you reach all the people who don’t understand that entrepreneurship is not what you and I are talking about, business, the schools, and management skills? Entrepreneurship is conducting experiments, figuring out better ways of doing things, and how do you improve the lives of yourself and others?
Entrepreneurship is conducting experiments, finding better ways to improve your life and the lives of others. Share on XThe general sense with GW was that when we started it, in fact, someone interviewed me for a video, and they made me say something that I thought was actually what it was, which was that we started in Eastern Europe right after the wall came down, starting to talk about entrepreneurship. We tried to go to all the most unlikely places and say, “What do you think about this thing? What do you think about us trying to light the candles?”
I remember the number of occasions where it became very clear to me. I remember in Croatia one day, sitting there in a full room with people, all sitting straight, all serious, all looking at me, absolutely no initiative. Eventually, we were basically telling people, “You have to go out there and break something. Don’t wait, and ask for permission. Just take the initiative, go do it.”
That’s definitely a sense of it, it was almost like we were not just unleashing ideas. To unleash ideas, we had to unleash the license in the public at large that they could do that. There was a sense, and now I think to come to your point is probably because it’s not that it’s not innate in the human spirit to do that, which is your observation, rightfully.
It’s probably because it’s been suppressed in certain cultures that you don’t really speak until you’re spoken to, or you don’t really take initiative unless you’re directed to do so. That is obviously one way for society to organize itself to have people in charge and a little bit more command and control. A lot of the time, you need that. You sort of need that sometimes, when you’re going to war with an army, you cannot have everybody deciding how to fight the war creatively. I’m not suggesting that has to apply to every part of life.
Certainly, in terms of solving problems, particularly huge problems, and doing it in new ways, is something that does require people to have that license and freedom to think for themselves in any way they wish, meaning all ideas are valid. We learned that with Global Entrepreneurship Week, there was a sense of lack of initiative, but that it wasn’t that it wasn’t there. It was that some cultures had put it in a place that said, “You need to you need to control your own independent thinking here.”
Unleashing Dormant Potential: The Power Of Permission And Relatable Models
It’s forbidden. That’s what the ice house has been out in the world like fifteen years now, Jonathan, and it’s been used in ways that I could have never predicted, much of which has nothing to do with actually starting businesses. To your point about Eastern Europe, what ice house has shown me is that there is a vast reservoir of untapped potential that’s dormant in people, and it’s waiting to get out.
As you mentioned, some people just need permission. Somebody needs to say, “It’s okay.” What’s also missing from, let’s say, the discourse or a cultural element that might be missing. People need to see relatable social models. If we put the entrepreneur on the pedestal, like Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, it’s just never going to attract anything but a small percentage of the population. If more people could understand, and you use some language just a minute ago, about how to experiment in the margins and how little ideas can expand over time into bigger ideas. I feel like if people understood that, a lot more would engage in it. Does that make sense to you?
You’re right. If people feel like there is a potential, a possibility that they could do this. That’s why culturally, in talking about how to understand this mindset, you’ve got to do it in an easily digestible view. By that, I guess the analogy I might give is, we have a conference, you bring in Mark Zuckerberg to be a speaker. The person who’s trying to create a new company in Ghana cannot relate to Mark Zuckerberg. There’s a little bit about that with the entrepreneurial mindset. You’ve got to show people that the next 2 or 3 steps are possible.
You've got to show people that the next 2 or 3 steps are possible. Share on XHelping people to not just see the world as my oyster and the art of possibility, but I can see those 3 or 4 steps right in front of me because so-and-so has just done it right ahead of me. Sometimes people like you and I love this field and feel like we’ve read deeply on the subject. We might forget that for some people, it’s still a stretch to really understand what this thing called an entrepreneurial mindset is, better than I do. What it really is and what it really means to them. Helping people not to have to stretch too far, too soon, is important.
Maybe I’m oversharing here, but like a lot of my work was informed by my exposure to Alcoholics Anonymous. If you look back to just immediately following prohibition in the United States in the 1930s. Alcoholics were dying in the streets. They’re locking them up in asylums. We didn’t know what to do with people who drank too much. What we found, Jonathan, is like the psychiatrist cannot help you, the doctor, the priest.
The person best suited to help you is you’re slightly more capable peer. It’s somebody who’s got a bit of sobriety ahead of you. It’s somebody that you can relate to. That’s a missing piece of the puzzle. If we keep talking about Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk, that’s going to do more to discourage entrepreneurship than encourage it.
I think you’re right. The glamour around the big success stories, particularly in tech, is very appealing, but you’re right. The examples that we should be sharing with people are considerably smaller. I couldn’t agree with you more.
Global Entrepreneurship: Lessons From Algeria And Saudi Arabia
Jonathan, which countries do you think are doing this really well? What are some examples, a really good front row seat to the whole global ecosystem?
There are definitely countries where they are understanding the importance of embedding that culture in their institutions. There are countries that I think still have this big divide, oil and water between the interests of institutions to society, and this, shall I say, lesser-known notion of what we call building something out of nothing, building, creating both in the new. In that context, I’ll just give you an example.
For example, in Algeria, physically the largest country in Africa, but an economy where they have a lot of great diversity because they have so many different languages, obviously French and Arabic, English, and more. They decided that they had a very ancient architecture when it came to government, if they felt like there was potential in entrepreneurship. They actually created a ministry of startups, and they hired an entrepreneur to be the minister.
Fast forward to three years ago, the people that he hired as his deputies have now become ministers. The great thing about that is they now have three ministries that are run by, shall I say, entrepreneurially minded people. One of them is in education. One’s obviously still the ministry of startups. I forgot the third one, but the point is that I think there are countries like that, because often the big question is, what are they doing? What’s different?
They’re respecting and encouraging this culture of thinking outside the box, to use an old-fashioned term. They’re respecting and the entrepreneurial mindset as an asset among the population, especially in countries where there is a lot of, shall I say, much more controlled command and control economies. There’s often been a fear of that in the sense that “Will it show its face in political expression?” We’ve always said, “No.”
Don’t worry about that. This isn’t a political exercise. In fact, if you allow people to go and get creative and destructive and do all these things and actually improve the lives of people around them through new products and services, that’s the best distraction for someone who doesn’t like to sit still and do nothing.
Cultivating Entrepreneurial Mindset: If you let people be creative, disruptive, and build things that improve lives, that becomes the best outlet for anyone who can’t sit still.
Maybe if they sit still and do nothing and there’s nothing for them to work with and there’s no opportunity to go to college, there’s no job, there’s no whatever it is, they’re more likely to start complaining and say, “I’m going to apply my disruptive thinking in a political way.” I certainly think there’s certainly countries that are several or eight countries in Africa, for example, that have now formed startups where they’re going from everything like how do we have a startup visa to what are the things we’re doing?
I don’t mean to focus on government, but government’s been the instigator in changing the culture. I have to bring up Saudi Arabia, where I think history will probably tell us that it was the pursuit of an entrepreneurial mindset that ultimately led to the opening up of that culture to some areas where it was challenging for the international community to accept that culture, whether it’s to do with the role of women or something.
I don’t like to pass judgments on other cultures. I like to just try to understand them and where they’re coming from. There was a lot of resistance. One of the things entrepreneurship does is that it does very much not just bring an entrepreneurial mindset, but it brings this open thinking mindset, where we’re more trusting in the individual. There are some great examples of new societies and emerging societies that are capitalizing on this wonderful energy of giving people permission and empowering them to think in this individualistic way about how they can improve something. Giving them that freedom to act. Those are some of the countries I would emphasize.
The Extraordinary Ability Of Ordinary People
I love that, Jonathan. Two things I want to touch on. That’s what Icehouse has done for me is expose the extraordinary ability of ordinary people. Even though it’s helped shift my thinking that the entrepreneurial potential lies dormant in people, a vast reservoir of entrepreneurial potential lies dormant in people in places that typical ecosystem builders or economic developers might overlook.
It’s an ordinary person. It’s not the great man theories of entrepreneurship. Do you know what I mean? It’s in people. I cannot really predict who is going to come forth. As an example, nobody’s betting on Sam Walton in 1947. Nobody recognizes this guy as a juggernaut. He’s a hick who came back from the war and borrowed a couple thousand dollars from his in-laws and started a discount variety store in an age when Sears Roebuck “reigned supreme.” I don’t know. The other thing I wanted to hit on, I don’t know if you ever read Fareed Zakaria’s book, Age of Revolutions.
If you haven’t, I highly recommend it. He points to the Dutch. I might have the timing wrong here, but like from the 13th to the 16th century, they built a global economic powerhouse out of a swamp with nothing based on entrepreneurial culture. I know it’s looking backwards, but it’s another example. There was really nothing there, but by cultivating this way of thinking in people, they built this huge, what they would call then, merchant class that dominated the globe for a long time.
I’m really excited to see that you’re working with other countries, and you’re starting to see the recognition. I’m a little bit worried, Jonathan. I was reading the EU’s EntreComp framework. It’s very clear that we need all students to develop basic entrepreneurial competencies. I still think they’re struggling with like how to do that, and I think I can actually help there. What scares me is that I don’t think we have a policy like that in the United States.
It seems like the rest of the world is waking up to the fact that entrepreneurial behavior, like entrepreneurial literacy, is the new three Rs, reading, writing arithmetic. Every kid needs these basic entrepreneurial competencies to adapt and thrive, whether or not they start a business. Is there a policy here in the United States that supports that or recognizes that?
Entrepreneurial Literacy: The New Three Rs For A Changing World
I don’t think there is. We do give it a lot of lip service. Truthfully, generally around the world, the attitude is this. Jobs and economic growth, extremely important. Yes, we know that firms less than five years old create the majority of net new jobs. If you actually look, I hate to say it, but you could look at both of the presidential campaigns of this last election, both the Harris and the Trump campaigns. You see a couple of things.
Someone’s obviously got it in there, and they picked a day, and they made an announcement that they’re going to do something. It’s going to say the word entrepreneur. As Koshram used to describe it, it’s still a side ring in the circus. It’s really not yet, in my view, recognized as part of mainstream economic policy. I’m sad to say that because I think some countries like I’m just going to go ahead and say, for example the UAE, have definitely said this is going to be central to how we build the society, and look what they’ve accomplished in fifteen years.
They’ve become the economic powerhouse in the region, but they’ve also become the center of entrepreneurial activity to the extent that people are moving there from all over the world. Sadly, I don’t think it’s that we’ve got another reading, writing, arithmetic, shall I say, cultural progress yet. People still understand that there are these people who are out there building these companies, but they tend to look at it through the eyes of the big tech entrepreneurs and the Magnificent Seven, as we call them, some of these really large companies, the NVIDIAs and Facebooks and matters of this world.
At the end of the day, it still becomes vitally important, not just for our economies, but for how we approach being employees, too. I will turn around and say, privately though, when I’ve been with very busy, I’m just going to say several heads of state I’ve had this same conversation with that we’re going on the stage, we’re backstage, we’re having a quick conversation, we’re going to go up and make some brief remarks to kick something off.
They’ll turn around and say, “Look, I get your argument that I’ve got to support new businesses, not just small businesses, because it’s where all the new growth and jobs are going to come from.” I hear it and understand it. I’m not sure I support it because I’m not sure I see the results that I’m really expecting to look for. I’m always going to support this. Guess why? It’s because it is the best path to teaching my citizens to have more initiative, to be more proactive, and to understand that they control their own future.
At the end of the day, I don’t care if they try their hands and test the idea of forming a team and trying to start a company. It doesn’t matter whether they start or fail, because that very experience is going to make them twenty times more employable by one of our employees. I frequently get anecdotal information that says, “I’m happy to support this even if it’s the best educational program our country can do, even if I don’t see that nice metric at the end of the day of all of those new jobs.”
Cultivating Entrepreneurial Mindset: It doesn’t matter whether they start or fail, because that experience makes them twenty times more employable by one of our employers.
Beyond Business: Entrepreneurship As A Behavioral Phenomenon
Jonathan, man, I love hearing you say this because what I see is that the vast preponderance of entrepreneurial potential in any community, in a country, in a state, whatever is in people in places that aren’t showing up at entrepreneurship events or people that haven’t raised their hand and said, “I’m going to do it.”
One data point that I’m sure you’re familiar with is that five point five million people applied for a business permit in the US last year. Less than one in ten of them acted on it. One way to interpret that data, there are many people who have entrepreneurial intentions, but they don’t act on it. In part because of the way entrepreneurship is portrayed, you’ve got to invent something, you’ve got to take big risks, you’ve got to put your 401(k) on the table or mortgage your house or whatever it is.
That’s just not the way. The bigger idea is what you were just speaking to, that by exposing all people to entrepreneurial thinking, the vast preponderance will never start a business, but they’ll become more engaged citizens. They’ll become more employable. They will attract talent. They will attract investment. We limit ourselves by thinking about entrepreneurship as a business discipline rather than a behavioral phenomenon. I don’t know.
You’re right. I occasionally give talks at universities. I’m regularly talking at Georgetown, for example. One of the things I always tell them is, “First of all, we’re not going to talk here about how to start a company. This is not about starting a company. This is about conducting an experiment. It’s about figuring out a better way of doing something.” That’s what you’re teaching people. It’s rather like, we’re very fortunate in the United States that there is a culture here that, for example, I didn’t experience in England.
In schools, and I watch my kids do this, they can form teams to work on things. We understand teams in the US culture pretty well. It is a skill set to learn how do I work, or listen to other people? How do I work out? How do we validate what ideas people are coming up with, what works, and how do we do that in a time-efficient way? Just for that purpose, entrepreneurship serves its right, because it is about being part of a team.
One of the things I always tell them is, “How many of you actually would like to start a company?” A whole bunch of hands go up, “A lot of them.” How many of you think you’re a disruptive enough thinker with an idea to actually do so? Only a few hands come up. I said, “All of you who put up your hand, you’re a potential that didn’t put up your hand the second time, you are a potential co-founder.
Go date a disruptive thinker because the reality is you actually like the idea of taking a little bit of a risk and actually starting a new company and being part of that exciting team that exists in all parts of life, which is how you actually create something new. How do you build something?” We could do the same together if we all go to Habitat for Humanity and we all build a house together for the day. That’s just a super fun thing to do, but you don’t know how to do it.
You do know a lot of things, like maybe you’re the person who’s going to keep everything in line. That’s going to make sure that maybe you’re the accountant, even. Maybe it’s a very uncreative role you’ve got, but with all due respect. You’re just as important on the team. Everybody, you’ve got to have different skill sets. You’re 100% correct. It is something we absolutely should cherish, as in all cultures.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from working and building Gen in 200 countries, it’s that we don’t have a single country, middle of the way, not in North Korea, but we’re everywhere else. There isn’t a single country that we’ve worked in that doesn’t get excited about entrepreneurship, which suggests to us that this is a bad thing or that it’s not a positive trait to instill in the public sentiment. It is a universally accepted thing that we’d like to build.
It brings a sense of possibility for the future. I certainly think that you are 100% right, Gary, to get us to discipline our thinking to say, “Let’s think about what this entrepreneurialism means in terms of a mindset.” As you think of written so eloquently about, you have been able to work out how to apply that in different arenas. I’ll finish with just one other thought, just very quickly say, there is a true story of a guy who gets in the elevator.
I know the guy. He got in the elevator and he said, “I couldn’t believe it. There I am for the first time working there for five years, in a big company.” There is the CEO with his assistant getting in the same elevator. He said, “Sir, I’ve never met you. I’ve always wanted to meet you because I have one thing to say. I know how we can transform the X department. I’ve tried everything I can to get my ideas through, but no one says that there’s any bandwidth or support to support it.”
He goes, “What’s your idea?” He tells him, “I’ll tell you what. You’re correct. Our corporate R&D just doesn’t have the ability to move like that. I’ll make you an offer. Leave the company. I’ll keep your benefits going, your health care benefits going. I’ll tell you what, if you give me your word that you will come back and give me the first right to buy your company if it succeeds, then you may go do that.
I’ll continue your health and retirement benefits so that that mitigates the risk for you a bit, which I’m not going to pay you. Secondly, if you fail after two years, you can come back and work here.” He says, “I can come back and work here?” He says, “Yes, you can have a job back.” “Why?” “It’s because you’re going to be much more employable to me having gone and tried that for yourself than you were before.”
Now, this happened to be something that was around technology. It was something that didn’t require. It’s not like he said, “I’ve got this idea to build an electric car plant battery or electric battery plant or something where you require a lot of institutional capital. The point is, it’s a good example of how the mindset is something we should cherish, we should value it, we should not be scared of it. Even if we cannot accommodate it, we can find ways to enable it to happen with nominal risk.
Managerial And Entrepreneurial Thinking: Adapting To Change
I love that. Jonathan, just to wrap up here, that sort of helps clarify my thinking, which is that in the last century, a managerial mindset was sufficient to get you through your career, but the rate of change is such that it’s no longer the case that we need both managerial and entrepreneurial thinking. We need to understand and have the cognitive dexterity to be able to understand which situation you’re in and which mindset to apply.
That’s how I think about it. The managerial mindset is appropriate in stable conditions, but it’s maladaptive in the face of change. What I’m saying in my work, Jonathan, is that whether you’re an individual, an organization, or a society, a culture, a state, you’ve got to preserve the core of what you’re doing. If you’re not re-appropriating some modicum of your discretionary thought time and effort into exploration and experimentation, like new ways to become useful to other humans, you’re going to become increasingly vulnerable. That’s my case for everybody to needs an entrepreneurial mindset.
You make it in a very convincing way. You’re 100% correct, Gary, in that thinking as always. Let me wrap up with one important observation for those people who listen to your podcasts. They’re not what society often calls. They’re not innovative in the sense that they’re trying to disrupt the market. I’m going to refer to the managers and I’m going to refer to the people who run small businesses.
Actually, there’s a big trend right now. In fact, one of the most popular things is, obviously, buying small businesses, but also getting into the air conditioning business and the plumbing business, and stuff. The thing I want to make sure that the main street companies, it’s extremely important that they still represent the majority of small businesses. What we’re talking about is that subsection of the small business community that’s constantly improving the quality of those services, how we do things, and creating a lot of growth opportunities and capital opportunities, and new job opportunities.
That does not in any way, shape, or form say that the entrepreneurial mindset is the only mindset. It basically says, “You’re right. We need that managerial mindset. We need people who want to run companies.” Those companies might, by the way, even be more profitable. They might end up being just as rewarding to the families that run them. That should be heralded, that should be recognized, and that should be celebrated.
It’s very important because some people think that we’re so focused on this hard part of actually, how do we reinvent the concept of how you deliver this product or service. It doesn’t mean it’s rather like I talked to policymakers. I remember when the Obama administration came in, and we spent a lot of time working on Startup America and things.
I was saying, “Look, just make sure we’re really clear about this. I’m not suggesting that you need to replace the current toolkit. There is a toolkit for supporting small businesses, existing passive, small, but main street small businesses.” That is a different toolkit from the toolkit you’ve got to put in place as a policymaker that sets the right rules and incentives, and initiatives that will make it possible to birth new companies. It’s just that it’s a different mindset. It’s a different skill set, and they are equally important.
Cultivating Entrepreneurial Mindset: It’s a different mindset and skill set, and they are equally important.
I love that. Jonathan, it’s a great place to end. Thanks so much for jumping on the show with me. Where can people learn more about what you’re doing or how to connect with you?
First of all, always good to go to our website, GenGlobal.org. I’m very good at my email. You can always reach me at Jonathan@GenGlobal.org. I just did a session in Kansas City with my dear friend Brad Feld, who has now done two within two months. Brad and I always say we go out of our way to actually answer our emails. That’s always the best way to get hold of me. We’d love to share more information if you have an interest in what we’re doing at the global ecosystem level.
Thank you, Jonathan.
You bet. Thanks, Gary.
Important Links
- Jonathan Ortsmans on LinkedIn
- Global Entrepreneurship Network
- Jonathan@GenGlobal.org
- Age of Revolutions