“Entrepreneurship better understood” by Edward W. Younkins

I came across this article in the section of entrepreneurship from Wikipedia. There are some interesting comments from this article which I will like to point out and perhaps, some of you might be happy to follow up with comments and thoughts.

Although Younkins pointed out in his article that the government can be perceived as an obstacle to entrepreneurship, he did not specifically talked how governments can help to facilitate entrepreneurship. He takes a point of view that it is in the human condition to succeed and fail and explained that “when the government protects some against failure, it actually increases the overall costs of failure by imposing it on others”. This is one specific example where the government is an obstacle.

However there are other roles which the government (this is not specific to any country) can be helpful to entrepreneurs:

1. Building of infrastructure: If the government devotes resources to build a good infrastructure, for example, new roads and new buildings to encourage incubation of small companies, the entrepreneur benefits from making use of the infrastructure to grow his business. For example, Silicon Valley and Barcelona, the state governments have set up a good infrastructure so that there is an atmosphere for entrepreneurial activity.

2. Regulation of bad practices in commerce: Think of the Enron scandal. The government has to act as the police to deal with entrepreneurs who might do “creative accounting” and engaged in activities that is not beneficial to the community.

Please feel free to comment your views and thoughts on the article.

Best regards.
sgentrepreneurs Editorial Board