Elizabeth Nolan Brown on How American Entrepreneurship Is Changing

Is American entrepreneurship in decline? That’s
the claim being made by Brookings Institution economists and
The Washington Post’s Robert Samuelson. A “precipitous
drop” in new startups since 2006 has led to an economy
oversaturated with mature companies and short on “creative
disruption,” they say. 

“Holding all factors constant, we’d expect an economy with
greater concentration in older firms and less in younger firms to
exhibit lower productivity, potentially less innovation, and
possibly fewer new jobs created than would otherwise be the case,”
worry the Brookings economists. But other factors are far from
constant. A parallel trend to this startup nosedive is the rise of
the freelance economy, Elizabeth Nolan Brown notes. And with it is
coming a new conception of entrepreneurship.

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