Academic

The Call of the Entrepreneur

By Gordon Smith, Christine, Hurt, Vic Fleischer, Fred Tung, Lisa Fairfax, David Zaring

The Call of the Entrepreneur is a new paean to entrepreneurship from the Acton Institute. The Acton Institute's mission is "Integrating Judeo-Christian Truths with Free Market Principles," and this film takes that charge very seriously. Near the end of the film, for example, several of the featured commentators compare entrepreneurs to God, in the sense that each is a Creator.

One of the challenges in doing scholarship related to entrepreneurship is that so many in the field are enthusiasts for entrepreneurship. A couple of years ago, for example, the head of a major foundation asked whether I would be interested in doing a study examining how some aspect of law related to entrepreneurship. At first, I was quite excited by the proposal, until I realized that the foundation had already essentially written the "Results" section of the study.

Um, how shall I say this? I can understand why you feel that law professors routinely proceed from conclusion to premises, but that's not how it works around here.

While I am quite fond of both entrepreneurship and Judeo-Christian truths, the deification of entrepreneurs is a bit much.

Full post as published by Conglomerate on April 07, 2008 (boomark / email).