Boulevard of Broken Dreams: Why Public Efforts to Boost Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital Have Failed

"If you think of the first two books I chose as providing broad inspiration and the second two books as targeted at entrepreneurship and how to deal with the process, my fifth choice takes an economic and societal perspective and asks, ‘Is entrepreneurship something good? And, if so, should the government do something about it?’ So, it asks the bigger societal questions. Again, in the interest of full disclosure, I know the author very well. We have been colleagues for over 20 years and I think Josh did a wonderful job in putting this together and verbalising a really important topic and giving it some coverage. At the same time, being 20-year colleagues, we have our healthy disagreements and continue to debate some of the details and conclusions of the book with which I beg to differ a little bit. I think the important contribution—and why I think this is a great book—is that it covers a broad range of policies and government efforts in many countries. Josh is a well-travelled man who has seen a lot of these efforts to promote entrepreneurship across the world. “There is a myth in Silicon Valley that it was all done in the private sector. That is plainly wrong and other authors have started to debunk that myth” He tries to draw lessons at a point in time where it’s quite difficult to evaluate these programs on a scientific basis. I think he draws a wealth of conclusions from it about the pitfalls of governments being well-intended, but causing more damage than benefit by supporting these programs. On balance, Josh thinks governments are bad and his message is quite clearly to limit the amount of government intervention. I come down slightly more positively on governments and have done some research, that came out after this book, that supports the notion that it’s not quite as bad as Josh makes it. That there are many nuances to the costs and benefits. Yes. Going beyond the book, I think there is a myth in Silicon Valley that it was all done in the private sector. That is plainly wrong and other authors have started to debunk that myth. Silicon Valley has benefited enormously from government programmes and funding support, especially in the early post-war years, and through having the military as a customer. Also, in setting a good institutional framework. The popular notion that is sometimes portrayed about Silicon Valley, that this is all without the help of the government, is just wrong. What the book does as well—and I think this is very important—is that it talks about how these government programmes can go wrong. In Malaysia, enormous investments were made without thinking about what was really going to happen and how entrepreneurial policy works. There Josh has some very positive messages that I like a lot. He says, think of the government as setting the table, the boundary conditions and the institutional environment—especially things like rule of law, clarity, low taxation—that allow entrepreneurs to do what they want to do and then move back. That is a very important message and I think Josh has helped to get it into policymakers’ minds. Today, the way that most policymakers look at the role of government for promoting entrepreneurship has matured considerably, relative to where it was 20 years ago. There is a difference between the US and Europe, for sure. Research continuously finds that. I think it is true that the government plays a larger role in Europe than it does in the US today. Some people say that’s why Europe is less entrepreneurial—because of the large role of government—but I’m not convinced. I think that Europe is less developed and that is why the government has stepped in. So, I see the causality going the other way. There continues to be inspiration that comes from the US, but I think there is intelligent use of government policy in Europe that can help and has helped. In fact, the UK is one of the most entrepreneurial European countries. All policies have their problems, but the alternative of withdrawing a lot of government support could be quite disastrous for the future of Europe. I think, on balance, some of these government policies really did help. And nurturing an entrepreneurial economy remains a top priority in these turbulent times!"