Saras Sarasvathy 2

How is it possible that The United States, home of the most self conscious entrepreneurial culture in the history of the world, could have only forty masters programs and six PhD programs devoted to the study of entrepreneurs? Business schools teach the management of corporate business--going businesses--but how are those businesses started?

Saras Sarasvathy works within the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business where her courses on entrepreneurial business are part of the overall business curriculum. But her descriptions of business starters sound like a species quite separate from corporate business types.

She compares entrepreneurs to "Iron Chefs"; they make success out of what ingredients they are given while the corporate man prefers the planned menu. Entrepreneurs have an aversion to research, "the careful forecast being the enemy of the fortuitous surprise." Small information is limiting to their expansive and optimistic minds. They prefer the doable, the achievable. They plan to build on that success. She calls the corporate mind "hunter gatherer", focused on competition and what ground can be gained from them. The entrepreneur is building a new land, the corporate man is rearranging the boundaries of existing geography.

This doesn't sound as if the entrepreneur is a subset of business education, he sounds like a different breed. He also sounds really important. http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2010/04/read-your-own-stats.html

It sounds as if he needs his own educational stomping ground.