Page 178 - 1-Entrepreneurship and Local Economic Development by Norman Walzer (z-lib.org)

Effective Entrepreneurship Education Programs 167

charge focused on the disparity between entrepreneurship activity in ur-
ban areas—especially the Twin Cities—and rural and smaller communi-
ties across the state.
An inventory of the small business services available in the outlying com-
munities suggested that someone in the process of starting a business could
expect a reasonable level of support from public and nongovernmental or-
ganizations. What then could explain the difference in the percentage of ru-
ral residents for whom entrepreneurship was a career choice, especially in
light of the fact that the responses to a series of Gallup surveys conducted
by the Kauffman Foundation (Walstad and Kourilsky 1999) suggested that
geography did not affect an individual’s interest in starting or running a
business?
The team’s deliberations resulted in a new model for understanding how
communities could reach their entrepreneurial potential. This new con-
struct relied on responses to three sequential questions:

1. Do residents have the propensity to become entrepreneurs?
2. Do those residents who have the propensity also have the skills and
knowledge associated with entrepreneurship?
3. Do those residents with the skills and knowledge receive the support
they need to increase their probability of success?

This epiphany occurred when the team members realized that they had
devoted a disproportionate share of their time and resources to the last
query and little attention to the first two. Supporting businesses through
technical assistance and financing programs was the traditional domain of
economic development—activities most economic development organiza-
tions had conducted for a considerable period of time and for which they
considered themselves competent.
The individual development of future business owners, this human as-
pect of the economic development process, fell outside the boundaries of
the historical economic development paradigm. Any entrepreneurship
strategy that focuses only on identifying and supporting adults who want to
start their own businesses ignores the largest potential audience—youth
who have yet to make a career decision.
For youth to consider entrepreneurship as a career choice, especially
in communities where high school graduates have historically migrated
to salaried jobs, community leaders and educators must recognize that
the education system and the curriculum associated with it have a sig-
nificant influence over career decisions. The best example of how educa-
tion can inhibit students’ entrepreneurial tendencies comes from an ex-
amination of factors that influence the rate of entrepreneurial activity in
EU countries.