Forbes: Entrepreneurship (Or Lack Thereof) In Millennials

http://www.forbes.com/entrepreneurs/2008/12/10/melliennial-barack-obama-ent-manage-cx_sb_1209berglasmillennial.html

by bigthboy • 18 years ago

6 8 18 years ago

Horrible.

That generation, born between 1946 and 1964, had a collective fascination with butt-kicking, entrepreneurial achievement.

Look at where all the "butt-kicking" corporate warriors got us!

So-called millennials, born between mid 1970s and 1990s, have received a radically different message--one captured in part by President-elect Barack Obama's stance on the benefits of "spreading the wealth around."

The author seems to suggest that cleaning up the messes of power's previous custodians, as Barack Obama will have to do, couldn't possibly be preparation for anything useful in the corporate world.

Not that millennials are damaged goods. Corporate recruiters drool over them for their ability to adapt and fit into bureaucratic enterprises. Overachieving, nobody-tells-me-what-to-do entrepreneurial types don't go so gently into that good night.

I thought the complaint about our generation was that we had sharp elbows, demanding to assert our individualism at work and be treated "as colleagues rather than as subordinates".

If any generation is bureaucratically-inclined, it's the Baby Boomers. We've accepted that there's no point in climbing corporate ladders that are going to vanish as we attempt to traverse them.

Rather than seeking to come out on top in zero-sum games, millennials strive for consensus.

Is that a bad thing? Although driven by competition, isn't business supposed to be positive-sum? It's only "zero sum" in stagnant corporations that have given up on measuring and encouraging production and, instead, fall back on political success for allocating rewards.

Dr. Steven Berglas spent 25 years on the faculty of Harvard Medical School’s Department of Psychiatry. Today he coaches entrepreneurs, executives and other high-achievers.

So he's a professor and a life coach, and he's berating us for our lack of entrepreneurial spirit?

potatolicious• 18 years ago

Agreed. Yet more alarmist "the next generation sucks!" drivel, backed up by a lot of big claims, and no data.

I am current in college (a few months from graduation), and let me just say that myself and many of my fellow students are all very entrepreneurial. More than a few of us have launched products, sites, and services to make money on the side, and going into business for yourself is a constant topic of conversation.

Yes, millennials are entrepreneurs - sometimes out of necessity. We no longer have the prospect of a cushy pension to look forward to, nor a predictable climb up a corporate ladder. The playing field has changed, and IMHO it now favors the bold.

strlen2• 18 years ago

"Life coaches" almost always smack of quackery to me. That's why I really hate seeing the motivational/psycho-babble articles on top of News.YC and (earlier) reddit.

prospero• 18 years ago

Little known facts about millenials:

* They are younger than the average person reading this article

* They know how to use computers

* They play well with others, except when they don't

* If placed in a well-lit room and given plenty of water, they will blossom (singing to them sometimes helps, too)

ajkirwin• 18 years ago

I've never read such a crock of shit since the last time I read something like this.

I'm sorry, because we don't subscribe to the model of "Grab all you can and fuck the other guy", somehow we're going to be useless entrepreneurs and crap at starting The Business of Tomorrow?

Fuck you, sir, and the boat you sailed in on. I and many others like me, have a great drive, but not for our own self-gratification, but for the betterment of many and I think that's a far greater thing than wanting to create the next IBM or Wells Fargo or whatever the hell.

azanar• 18 years ago

>I and many others like me, have a great drive, but not for our own self-gratification, but for the betterment of many and I think that's a far greater thing than wanting to create the next IBM or Wells Fargo or whatever the hell.

Drive rooted in self-interest and self-gratification isn't a universal evil. The problem really is the broken philosophy that screwing over the other guy is the only high odds way to gain. It only works until all the potential gains from what we've already created are realized. At that point, supply and/or demand dry up, and we end up in big trouble economically. People who push for this describe economics as a zero-sum game. They say fuck their neighbor because the only way to acquire wealth is to steal some of his/hers. They neglect to account for the decay term caused by the decrease value in what has already been made; they assume scarcity is a constant, or attempt to make it artificially so. They also neglect to account for the growth term, which is new things being introduced into the market, adding to the overall wealth of what we've created. Someone driven by self-interest would do better to increase this growth term, but that tends to be hard work and the short-term payoff, if that's what they need to stay motivated, is rarely there.

strlen2• 18 years ago

So there are articles saying "millennials" can't just smoothly blend into the corporate environment (and are a problem for corporate recruiters) - because they've been coddled and want to do "their own thing" - and there are articles saying "millennials" can only blend into the corporate environment (and are great for corporate recruiters) because they've been "coddled".

All of these articles appear in magazines of similar bent like WSJ and Forbes.

Logically, they're saying

"Millennial" implies "Coddled" ;

"Coddled" AND "in corporate hierarchy" implies "can't succeed" ;

"Coddled" AND NOT "in corporate hierarchy" implies "can't succeed" ;

So either they're (WSJ, Forbes) claiming A) millennials MUST fail in any environment (whether corporate or not) or B) these people (writers for WSJ, Forbes) are being emotional and not logically consistent.

If A is true they need to have statistics that all things being equal millennials (and I assume those possesing a BA/BS degree from a university and coming from a middle class background, i.e. "coddled" ones) are more likely to be unemployed (while not being enrolled in education or training) than their peers from other generation. I don't seem to find this to be true...

comatose_kid• 18 years ago

There's a lot of emotion, but not a lot of data (in the original article, or in our discussion).

The sole data point I can think of to support his point is Richard Branson. Check out how he was raised (an extreme amount of independence/autonomy) in his biography.

That said, there are 2 serious issues in this article:

1) He assumes that millennials are more coddled than other generations. How can he prove this?

2) How can he prove that there is an inverse correlation between the amount of coddling and entrepreneurial outcomes?

Until he provides hard data, he ends up sounding like a typical social 'scientist'.

Anyways, the article provided at least one benefit for me in that it raised the question: are there things we can do as parents to help our children become more entrepreneurial?

Forbes: Entrepreneurship (Or Lack Thereof) In Millennials

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