Discussion: Cities and Entrepreneurship

This post is part of the Teachers Certification Map’s “discussion series,” a collection of posts featuring highlights and questions around the evolving state of education aimed at enlightening young teachers as they embark on their careers.

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A New York Times economix column looks at whether the “success” of city is tied to how entrepreneurial it is:

The answer should matter for two reasons: local policy makers are constantly looking for ways to rev the economic engines of their cities, and the ingredients of success at the local level can help inform national policy. Just as city-level evidence on the connection between education and urban growth helps build the case for a national schooling agenda, city-level evidence on the determinants of entrepreneurship should help guide federal policies toward new businesses.

My first thought of skepticism to this claim was regarding “measurement.” Apparently, it’s being thought about a few ways:

One route is to use the self-employment rate, but self-employment doesn’t capture the scale of the enterprise or its success. It also creates some anomalous results.

If the self-employment rate captures entrepreneurship, then West Palm Beach is by far the most entrepreneurial place in the country and the San Jose metropolitan area, that home of Silicon Valley, is one of the least.

Discussion: Do you think the location of a university have any indication of how “entrepreneurial” the coursework, students or teachers are?

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