TITLE: Risks and the Entrepreneurs Who Take Them
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: August 28, 2013  3:07 PM
DESC: 
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BODY:
Someone on the SIGCSE mailing list posted a link to
<A HREF="http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/08/entrepreneurship-the-ultimate-white-privilege/278727/">
   an article in the Atlantic</A>,
that explores a correlation between entrepreneurship, teenaged
delinquency, and white male privilege.  The article starts
with

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
It does not strike me as a coincidence that a career path best
suited for mild high school delinquents ends up full of white
men.
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

and concludes with

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
To be successful at running your own company, you need a
personality type that society is a lot more forgiving of if
you're white.
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

The sender of the link was curious what educational implications
these findings have, if any, for how we treat academic integrity
in the classroom.  That's an interesting question, though my
personal tendency to follow rules and not rock the boat has
always made me more sensitive to the behavior of students who
employ the aphorism "ask for forgiveness, not permission" a
little too cavalierly for my taste.

My first reaction to the claims of this article was tied to how
I think about the kinds of risks that entrepreneurs take.

When most people in the start-up world talk about taking risks,
they are talking about the risk of failure and, to a lesser
extent, the risk of being unconventional, not the risk of being
caught doing something wrong.  In my personal experience, the
only delinquent behavior our entrepreneurial former students
could be accused of is not doing their homework as regularly as
they should.  Time spent learning for their business is time
not spent on my course.  But that's not delinquent behavior;
it's curiosity focused somewhere other than my classroom.

It's not surprising, though, that teens who were willing take
legal risks are more likely willing to take business risk, and
(sadly) legal risks in their businesses.  Maybe I've simply
been lucky to have worked with students and other entrepreneurs
of high character.

Of course, there is almost certainly a white male privilege
associated with the risk of failure, too.  White males are often
better positioned financially and socially than women or
minorities to start over when a company fails.  It's also easier
to be unconventional and stand out from the crowd when you don't
already stand out from the crowd due to your race or gender.
That probably accounts for the preponderance of highly-educated
white men in start-ups better than a greater willingness to
partake in "aggressive, illicit, risk-taking activities".
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