The evidence from the past is quite clear: enterprises are conceived in passion and born in communities of trust and practice. Some degree of stress also seems to be essential. Although the European recession seems to be providing that stress the responses to it may not be channeled in the right directions.

In the past these communities have often been fringe communities of faith that were typically egalitarian and were in rebellion against what they saw as an oppressive, hierarchical establishment.

Historically the best example is this of the Quakers and other Nonconformist communities in England during the 17th and 18th Centuries. Nearly 50% of the entrepreneurs during the 18th Century had Nonconformist roots. The Quakers pioneered the apprenticeship system and they prized learning-by-doing over what they called “head knowledge”. They were also the founders of human resources and marketing.

Modern examples would be:

Israel (See Senor and Singer, “Start-up Nation”) where the army and national service supply a social pressure cooker, where people from all walks of life bond together. The relationships formed during national service in the army under continual threat of war plus the technical focus on intelligence, encryption and a host of other technologies supply the seeds and the soil for enterprises.

The Basques of Spain, especially in cooperatives like Mondragon, seem to have been much more resilient and innovative over the years. See http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19213425?goback=%2Egde_4482985_member_146369231

The Mormons of America and the kind of training and experiences that they give to their young missionaries offer an excellent example of what is possible if young people are inculcated with virtuous habits and placed circumstances of modest stress.

So the question is: Where in Europe are we seeing the formation of similar communities of trust and practice that offer paths to self-discipline and the ability to learn by example from excellent practitioners? What should governments be doing to supply bonding experiences for young people – reintroduce some form of national service that requires work in communities on really “wicked’ problems?

Entrepreneurship is a human ability to take ownership of an idea, to organize the necessary resources and to implement it. Entrepreneurship is one of the core human competencies. It can be deployed way beyond just economic activities. But it requires perseverance, zeal and passion. Entrepreneurship is about taking initiatives and responsibility. It requires skills like: Capturing opportunities and taking charge; resourcefulness; convincing others; finding creative solutions; reaching results
We have been developing over 15’000 entrepreneurs in Poland during ten years based on real, actual cases of the participants. Our company helps companies to develop business cases for innovation based business development since twenty years. It is evident that innovation is composed of three core elements: creative solutions, business case and entrepreneurship. Lack of entrepreneurship is one of the reasons why Europe is not more innovative!

The natural result of programs like http://www.coderdojo.com , where self directed learning is the focus, is an increase in self determination and application.

Europe needs to encourage self application rather than the current trend towards safety and security by avoiding risk.