102. Dale Caldwell: Entrepreneur Zones Will Drive Accelerated Growth For Cities

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Can entrepreneurship be a collaborative undertaking across multiple firms? Entrepreneur Zones are an idea from Dale Caldwell to boost the economic performance of cities, and represent one form of collaborative entrepreneurship. The business platform the Mises Institute is building — Economics For Business — represents another: an online collaboration of entrepreneurs to share knowledge, experience, and practices, while competing individually to be the best at serving customers.

How will this work? We can answer this question using our “5 Cs Framework”.

Download The Episode ResourceThe 5 C’s of Entrepreneur Zones – Download

Key Takeaways & Actionable Insights

1. Consumer Sovereignty / Customer First

The first principle of entrepreneurship is that value is subjective, and one way to express that principle is that consumers determine value. Entrepreneurs facilitate value for consumers. That principle is never relaxed. Deviation from it is fatal for entrepreneurial businesses. Therefore, even in circumstances where we see opportunities for entrepreneurial collaboration, it is never in violation of consumer sovereignty. Any collaboration is directed towards the facilitation of consumer value, and does not detract from it.

2. Collaborative Efficiency.

In an Entrepreneur Zone, as envisioned by Dale Caldwell, there is the opportunity for a group of entrepreneurs (geographically co-located in a city in his case, but potentially grouped along other dimensions) to search for shared advantage. To speculate, the shared advantage in an Entrepreneur Zone might be found in shared services, reducing unproductive overhead for all firms and releasing resources for exploration, innovation, and customer service. It could be found in shared or pooled marketing.

In the case of Economics For Business, we aim to provide shared knowledge (reducing search and knowledge acquisition costs and overcoming knowledge constraints), processes and tools that can be applied by all for greater effectiveness, and shared experience that can speed up learning.

3. Competitiveness

“Collaborating to compete” sounds contradictory on the surface, but is the essence of capitalism. While firms look for shared advantage where it is available, they equally search for individual advantage through innovation, better ideas, better customer service and stronger relationships. The rivalrous drive to serve customers better and therefore enjoy the resultant revenue streams is primary. It’s the energy of economic growth. Success can be replicated by imitators, which is one of the ways the system works for all. By that time, the innovators have advanced to the next stage of competitive advantage. The system never stops and progress never ends, because of the competitive drive.

4. Creativity

Behind competitiveness is creativity. New ideas and new knowledge, the result of new experiments, provide the fuel for continued growth. The collaborative entrepreneurial group can share ideas, bounce ideas between them, pursue their own ideas, ask for help, and merge ideas into new combinations. Creative ideas remain the original source for all entrepreneurs.

5. Cumulative Improvement

Entrepreneurship is a journey, with many twists and turns. It calls for learning, which might often require abandoning a path that once looked promising and taking up another. Success comes over time, via more and more learning, more and more feedback from the marketplace, more and more experiments run and recorded, more and more customer experiences logged. Improvement accumulates over time. For a collaboration such as Entrepreneur Zones or Economics For Business, participating entrepreneurs can anticipate long term success without any certainty about the length of the timeline.

Free Downloads & Extras From The Episode

“The 5 C’s of Entrepreneur Zones” (PDF): Download the PDF

White Paper: “New Jersey Entrepreneur Zones” by Dale Caldwell (PDF): Download the PDF

“Dale Caldwell Believes that Jobs Can Drive Societal Change”: Read the Article

“Healing Divided Country with Entrepreneurship”: Read the Article

“Opportunity Zones… We Need Entrepreneur Zones”: Read the Article

“Trauma in Employment” (PDF): Download the PDF

“The Austrian Business Model” (video): https://e4epod.com/model

Start Your Own Entrepreneurial Journey

Ready to put Austrian Economics knowledge from the podcast to work for your business? Start your own entrepreneurial journey.

Enjoying The Podcast? Review, Subscribe & Listen On Your Favorite Platform:

Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify

Treating Consumers As Means Not Ends Is A Fatal Business Model Flaw.

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Recently, some of the Big Tech companies of Silicon Value have been caught in anti-market behavior. They have censored or even banned some of their own consumers. Since value lies in consumer experience, and since capital is the net present value of future claims to revenue streams from consumers, these firms are destroying value and consuming capital. Why? How can this happen?

Where Is the consumer? 

The goal of business – the end, to use means-ends language – is to facilitate an experience for the consumer that they value. Using Austrian economics as its foundation, the Economics For Business project has built an innovative business paradigm and a complete business model framework on the principle of consumer value. Entrepreneurs are those who create new value, and they submit to evaluation by the consumer to determine their success. They maintain a clear line of sight to the consumer at all times, from the very first step in imagining a new business, new product or service or any improvement in their offering, all the way to the consumer’s ultimate usage experience.

Technology-driven means not thinking about the consumer.

The histories of many Silicon Valley tech firms reveal that they don’t have this line of sight to the consumer. Many started out to build a technology, one that performs efficiently, automates effectively, and exhibits cool features. There’s a pride in engineering, as there should be. But even the most beautiful technology can’t succeed without consumers in mind. The technology-driven approach to innovation must not contravene the principles of the consumer-driven approach to value.

When consumer value is not the business model.

Facilitating consumer value is a business model. Value is a learning process for consumers, of which exchange value (paying in dollars for value anticipated) is a component part. The revenue model for the entrepreneurial firm consists in earning this exchange. It’s all integrated. Some Silicon Valley companies (Google, for one) accepted investor funds and began operations without a business model in place. When consumer value is not integral to the firm, it’s quite possible that they lose their grip on the concept. They don’t create value for consumers, or for the economy. Or for investors, for that matter – they’re using investor funds in ways the consumer does not value.

In many Silicon Valley models, consumers are creators of content for the technology company to control, analyze and re-sell as data to the advertiser. Consumers are creating value for the platform, not vice versa.

Monetization as an afterthought.

We often hear the word “monetization” in descriptions of Silicon Valley business models. The word itself is quite revealing. It certainly doesn’t connote a commitment to serving the consumer. Monetization is the search for a revenue model after the technology is launched. Many of the monetization schemes are advertising-based, which can be problematic. They are often value-destroying for consumers, especially in the “interrupt and annoy” formats that are common on the internet today. Advertising is certainly not innovative – it’s been around for a very long time, long before Silicon Valley came into existence. When firms are selling consumers to advertisers, their commitment to consumer value becomes secondary.

It’s not that B2B business models are any less valid than B2C. They key is to remember the Austrian principle that value in any stage of the production chain is made possible only if there is consumer value at the end of the chain. Microsoft, for example, is a technology company primarily focused on B2B value propositions in areas like business productivity. They always have an eye on the next stage in the value chain: improved business productivity and efficiency enables Microsoft’s customers to, in turn, produce lower cost consumer services and enhanced consumer experiences. Microsoft has its eye not only on the immediate B2B customer, but also the next stage of the value chain.

A cultural problem.

Ultimately, the kinds of Silicon Valley companies to which these observations apply face a cultural problem. Consumer value and consumer service are not a sufficient part of their DNA. They were founded and developed to nurture technology – in some cases, brilliant technology, in others more mundane; they found technical ways to reach mass distribution based on the new power laws of digital networks; they found bolt-on monetization schemes that responded to mass reach. Culturally, the idea of consumer value has never been central to them.

Perhaps that’s why, today, we see Twitter censoring its users and throwing them off the platform, angering many more.

Generative products versus central control.

The value promise of today’s digital products and digital markets is exciting for consumers. The term “generative” has been coined to describe the new characteristics of products that give consumers leverage – make their jobs easier; that provide adaptability so that consumers can change them to suit their own purposes; and that are easy to master and easy to access. The spirit of generativity lies in unleashing end-user creativity.

Some Big Tech companies don’t seem to believe in the generativity of their products and their consumer relationships. They prefer centralization and control. They want to collect and control consumer data and turn it into their own closed products. That’s why they need so many engineers to build the algorithms and the data banks. That’s why they need so many content monitors to project their control. They are centralizers in a world of decentralization. This leaves them open to disruption by the next generation of entrepreneurs who start their journey from the point of view of what consumers value.

Mike Masnick’s proposal: Protocols, Not Platforms.

Our Knowledge Graphic: Silicon Valley Is Bad At Entrepreneurship

 

 

101. Per Bylund: Silicon Valley Is Bad At Entrepreneurship.

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Our goal at Economics For Business is to help entrepreneurs and their businesses succeed. Per Bylund and Hunter Hastings discuss the true implications of the current furor over the anti-market behavior of some of the Big Tech companies of Silicon Valley. They are destroying value and consuming capital.

Why? How can this happen? Read Per Bylund’s Tweets.

Download The Episode Resource Silicon Valley Is Bad At Entrepreneurship – Download

Key Takeaways & Actionable Insights

Where Is the consumer?

The Austrian business model emphasizes that the consumer is in first position. The goal of entrepreneurship is the creation of new value, and Austrian entrepreneurs understand that value is an experience, and evaluation is in the consumer’s mind. Entrepreneurs facilitate value experiences, via an understanding of what consumers will value, and of gaps or shortfalls in the value propositions from which they choose today. Business success lies in filling the gaps and solving the shortfalls.

Silicon Valley Is Bad At Entrepreneurship

Technology-driven means not thinking about the consumer

The histories of many Silicon Valley tech firms reveal that they started out to build a technology, one that performs efficiently, automates effectively, and exhibits cool features. There’s a pride in engineering, as there should be. But even the most beautiful technology can’t succeed without consumers in mind. The technology-driven approach to innovation must not contravene the principles of the consumer-driven approach to value.

When consumer value is not the business model

Facilitating consumer value is a business model. Value is a learning process for consumers, of which exchange value (paying in dollars for value anticipated) is a component part. The revenue model for the entrepreneurial firm consists in earning this exchange. It’s all integrated. Some Silicon Valley companies (Google, for one) accepted investor funds and began operations without a business model in place. When consumer value is not integral to the firm, it’s quite possible that they lose their grip on the concept. They don’t create value for consumers, or for the economy. Or for investors, for that matter — they’re using investor funds in ways the consumer does not value.

In many Silicon Valley models, consumers are creators of content for the technology company to control, analyze and re-sell as data to the advertiser. Consumers are creating value for the platform, not vice versa.

Monetization as an afterthought

We often hear the word “monetization” in descriptions of Silicon Valley business models. The word itself is quite revealing. It certainly doesn’t connote a commitment to serving the consumer. Monetization is the search for a revenue model after the technology is launched. Many of the monetization schemes are advertising-based, which can be problematic. They are often value-destroying for consumers, especially in the “interrupt and annoy” formats that are common on the internet today. Advertising is certainly not innovative — it’s been around for a very long time, long before Silicon Valley came into existence. When firms are selling consumers to advertisers, their commitment to consumer value becomes secondary.

It’s not that B2B business models are any less valid than B2C. The key is to remember the Austrian principle that value in any stage of the production chain is made possible only if there is consumer value at the end of the chain. Microsoft, for example, is a technology company primarily focused on B2B value propositions in areas like business productivity. They always have an eye on the next stage in the value chain: improved business productivity and efficiency enable Microsoft’s customers to, in turn, produce lower-cost consumer services and enhanced consumer experiences. Microsoft has its eye not only on the immediate B2B customer but also on the next stage of the value chain.

A cultural problem

Ultimately, the kinds of Silicon Valley companies to which these observations apply face a cultural problem. Consumer value and consumer service are not a sufficient part of their DNA. They were founded and developed to nurture technology — in some cases, brilliant technology, in others more mundane; they found technical ways to reach mass distribution based on the new power laws of digital networks; they found bolt-on monetization schemes that responded to mass reach. Culturally, the idea of consumer value has never been central to them.

Perhaps that’s why, today, we see Twitter censoring its users and throwing them off the platform, angering many more.

Generative products versus central control

The value promise of today’s digital products and digital markets is exciting for consumers. The term “generative” has been coined to describe the new characteristics of products that give consumers leverage – make their jobs easier; that provide adaptability so that consumers can change them to suit their own purposes; and that are easy to master and easy to access. The spirit of generativity lies in unleashing end-user creativity.

Some Big Tech companies don’t seem to believe in the generativity of their products and their consumer relationships. They prefer centralization and control. They want to collect and control consumer data and turn it into their own closed products. That’s why they need so many engineers to build the algorithms and the data banks. That’s why they need so many content monitors to project their control. They are centralizers in a world of decentralization. This leaves them open to disruption by the next generation of entrepreneurs who start their journey from the point of view of what consumers value.

Free Downloads & Extras From The Episode

“Silicon Valley is Bad at Entrepreneurship” (PDF): Download the PDF

Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free Speech by Mike Masnick: Download the PDF

“The Austrian Business Model” (video): https://e4epod.com/model

Start Your Own Entrepreneurial Journey

Ready to put Austrian Economics knowledge from the podcast to work for your business? Start your own entrepreneurial journey.

Enjoying The Podcast? Review, Subscribe & Listen On Your Favorite Platform:

Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify

 

100. Jeff Deist: Animating Economics to Serve Real People and Real Businesses

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Economics is treated by many as an arid field of mathematical modeling. Human beings are treated as data in the model, almost the way physics regards atoms and molecules. This approach to economics doesn’t help people much; it doesn’t help us understand the world, and isn’t helping us build a better future.

Economics is an animating science. Austrian economics is humanistic; it treats humans as people, pursuing their hopes and dreams, frequently changing, seldom predictable, and never acting like data in a model.

That’s why we see our brand of economics as animating: helping people to understand better how to identify the best means for their chosen ends. For businesspeople, that translates into knowledge, processes and tools to help businesses grow and thrive.

Download The Episode Resource Entrepreneurial GPS – Download

Key Takeaways & Actionable Insights

The role of the entrepreneur

Entrepreneurship is the animation of business. It’s action; the exciting process of turning business knowledge and market signals into commercial solutions with the application of imagination, insight, creativity, resource assembly, and agile adjustment.

A big part of what makes Austrian economics different and better for business application is the understanding of the role of the entrepreneur and the entrepreneurial function in the economy. Jeff Deist articulated this role as a nexus between capital and markets, and the entrepreneur as the individual taking risk, employing their own property and having skin in the game. It’s an exciting role.

Entrepreneurship and value

Entrepreneurial business is the intentional pursuit of new economic value. The pursuit requires a deep understanding of the concept of value, an understanding that Austrian economics provides. Ever since Carl Menger established the concept of subjective value, Austrian economists have been deepening their understanding still further. Today, we recognize more than ever the role of the customer in value creation; since value is their experience, they are active collaborators. Entrepreneurs harness this collaboration. Think of an iPhone. Apple designs and assembles it, and then a large part of the value experience comes from the user adding apps, composing and sending and receiving messages and e-mails, choosing videos to watch and podcasts to listen to, eagerly contributing to the value experience that they themselves enjoy.

Value is what users make it.

Individualism and diversity

Entrepreneurial economics recognizes the role of the individual. It respects and honors the individual choice. Each individual, in the role of both consumer and producer, exhibits different preferences, personality, and psychology; we live in different places and in different contexts; we each have different needs and wants.

There are many favorable outcomes from individualism. One is the vast global diversity of the marketplace, whether exhibited on amazon or Alibaba or Grainger.com for industrial supplies. Another is economics as an engine of humanity and peace, which is the context for entrepreneurs providing goods and services globally to customers.

Specialization, achievement and satisfaction

Economics For Business aims to help all businesses and all entrepreneurs to find their specialization in this global ecosystem. We apply the economic principles of the specialized division of knowledge and division of labor. We all have knowledge that is unique to us, and we can all find an application of that knowledge in business.

Bob Luddy, who has been a guest on our podcast, founded CaptiveAire, a company that specializes in restaurant ventilation systems, providing benefits of safety, comfort, clean air and regulatory compliance to a broad range of foodservice customers. Bob stresses the value of specialization to become the leader in a category – a share leader and a knowledge leader and an innovation leader. And he’ll tell you that the non-material rewards of economic specialization are delightful, including satisfaction, achievement, earned respect.

CaptiveAire is a great example of considered specialization – it’s not in a high tech category (although there is a lot of tech incorporated in CaptiveAire’s product and service bundle), or an internet business or a software business. Find your customers, find a need that is not being filled, and build from there.

Big data versus big empathy and big insights

We live in an era where more and more data is being collected, compiled, processed and analyzed by producers (as well as non-economic actors such as governments, of course). As the sources of data, many of us have concerns about this trend. The economic principle that is more important for businesses, however, is that, no matter how “big” the data sets are, they do not have value (they are not causal data) until they provide or reveal some qualitative understanding of customer feelings, motivations or attitudes. These are the data that are genuinely useful to businesses. The Economics For Business method to develop this understanding is empathy, and we have a full toolset to help entrepreneurs apply it.

MBA-ization versus products, people and active learning

Jeff quoted Elon Musk on the subject of MBA-ization of business: too much focus on financial modeling and spreadsheets, and not enough on deploying engineers on the factory floor to develop, introduce and continuously improve great products that provide the customer with a delightful experience. Jeff concurred that MBA programs and business schools have become bogged down with a lot of dead weight, and have obscured some of their market-facing functions. They don’t provide the value they ought to provide for the tuition charged.

Economics For Business can provide the 20% of business school knowledge that’s actually valuable, and add new content – informed with Austrian insight – that’s even more relevant, plus the methodology and tools to apply the knowledge in business practice.

This approach is based on the educational science of active learning. In this view, learning is not achieved via books and lectures (which are necessarily backward-looking) but via the receipt of tools and methods and techniques, applying them oneself in real-life situations, and learning from the feedback received from people and markets and business results.

Building experience and sharing experience.

Active learning is the accumulation of experience. It is the unique experience of entrepreneurs and their teams gained from the operation of their businesses that constitutes the division of knowledge flywheel that continuously reinforces their advantaged position in the marketplace.

There is a time value to experience; it takes time to accumulate. On the Economics For Business platform, we’ll aim to identify ways to share experience to speed up the experience-gathering timeline. Q&A and discussion within our entrepreneurial community is one way. Another is mentoring, whereby experienced business people can share what they’ve learned over time.

Economics as a route to work and life satisfaction.

In his book Dynamism, Economic Nobel prizewinner Edmund Phelps tells us that, according to individually reported life satisfaction scores (e.g. Pew Research Center surveys and other similar surveys), the greater part of life satisfaction results from production activities rather than consumer activities. The purpose and meaning of taking on challenges, achieving results, making discoveries, self-reliance, and success in meeting goals are found in participation in the production side of the economic system. We hope to play our part in the stimulus of those satisfactions via the Mises Institute’s Economics For Business project.

Free Downloads & Extras From The Episode

Economics For Business utilizes a journey metaphor for the entrepreneurial process. Take a look at our visual summary: Download the PDF

“The Austrian Business Model” (video): https://e4epod.com/model

Start Your Own Entrepreneurial Journey

Ready to put Austrian Economics knowledge from the podcast to work for your business? Start your own entrepreneurial journey.

Enjoying The Podcast? Review, Subscribe & Listen On Your Favorite Platform:

Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify

Your Attitude And My Attitude Are The Sources Of Economic Growth And National Prosperity.

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Who are the drivers of prosperity? Economists would say it’s them. At least the ones who work for the Federal Reserve and the US Treasury and numerous think tanks and lobbying firms in Washington DC would say that. They capture economics in mathematical models, with variables like money supply, government spending, workforce participation, and mysterious forces like technological advance. By tweaking their variables, they believe they can forecast outputs such as GDP and employment levels. The economy is a mathematical machine and they are the geniuses in charge.

Bezos, Zuckerberg, and Cook would say it’s them. They run the tech companies that dominate global commerce, employ people, provide retail platforms for minion companies that sell apps and gadgets and groceries. Without them, there’d be no economy and no prosperity.

Larry Fink at BlackRock, Jamie Dimon at JPMorgan Chase, David Solomon at Goldman Sachs, Warren Buffet at Berkshire Hathaway, and the other titans of finance would say it’s them. They are the financial capitalists who supply the juice to keep the economic lights burning.

Edmund Phelps was awarded the economics Nobel Prize for revealing that it’s none of these. It’s you and me. You can read his theorizing in Mass Flourishing: How Grassroots Innovation Created Jobs, Challenge, And Change.

Prosperity on a national scale—mass flourishing—comes from broad involvement of people in the processes of innovation: the conception, development, and spread of new methods and products—indigenous innovation down to the grassroots. This dynamism may be narrowed or weakened by institutions arising from imperfect understanding or competing objectives. But institutions alone cannot create it. Broad dynamism must be fueled by the right values and not too diluted by other values.

Note the term “broad involvement”. Phelps means everyone in the nation: he describes a culture of innovation.

the stuff of flourishing—the change, challenge, and lifelong quest for originality, discovery, and making a difference.

Modern economies display what he calls dynamism: the appetite and capacity of “indigenous innovation”, and “original ideas born of creativity and grounded on the uniqueness of each person’s private knowledge, information and imagination”. Phelps is not an Austrian economist – he can’t afford to be, since he chooses to make his name and his living inside the academic fortress of Keynesianism, not assaulting it from the outside. But he certainly sounds like one in his invocation of subjectivity in identifying these personal, individual, and psychological drivers of prosperity.

There are great benefits for the individuals who populate and participate in a dynamic modern economy:

the mental stimulus, the problems to solve, the arrival of a new insight, and the rest. I have sought to convey an impression of the rich experience of working and living in such an economy. As I considered this vast canvas, I was excited to realize that no one had ever depicted what a modern economy felt like.

“What a modern economy felt like”! Isn’t that the ultimate in subjectivism in economics? He goes further into subjectivism by identifying attitudes and beliefs as the drivers of economic results.

attitudes and beliefs were the wellspring of the dynamism of the modern economies. It is mainly a culture protecting and inspiring individuality, imagination, understanding, and self-expression that drives a nation’s indigenous innovation.. (with) a new set of values – modern values like expressing creativity for its own sake, and personal growth for one’s own sake.

As measures of prosperity, Phelps focuses largely on survey data: people answering questions about how they feel. Among the most important of these, in Phelps’s mind, are job satisfaction scores and life satisfaction scores. He conducts a comparative analysis across (mostly Western) countries that leads him to conclude that people derive more life satisfaction from activities as producers than activities as consumers. This finding stands in opposition to many of the critics of capitalism, who deride the system for making conspicuous consumers of us all, focused on what we buy rather than what we make.

As producers, it is our individual knowledge that gives us power:

it would appear that only increasing economic knowledge—knowledge of how to produce and knowledge about what to produce—could have enabled the steep climb in national productivity and real wages in the take-off countries.

With time, the modernist emphasis on increasing knowledge—and the presumption that there is always more knowledge to come—triumphed over traditional emphases on capital, scale, commerce, and trade. But where did that knowledge come from? Whose “ingenuity” was it?

The ingenuity is yours and mine.

In a follow-up work called Dynamism: The Values That Drive Innovation, Job Satisfaction And Economic Growth, Phelps gives us more specificity about the “modern values” people in dynamic, innovative economies hold:

  • More satisfaction from non-material rewards than from material rewards;
  • An outsize desire for achieving something through one’s own efforts (and being recognized for it);
  • Huge satisfaction in succeeding and prospering;
  • Delight in the sense of flourishing that comes from life’s journey and the thrill of voyaging into the unknown;
  • Satisfaction from making a difference, making a mark.

Underlying these satisfactions are the values of individualism, vitalism, and self-expression. Modernist satisfactions are inherently individualistic: one’s own and one’s closest family. Vitalism looks to challenges and opportunities that contribute to the feeling of being alive. Self-expression is the imagination and creation of new things and new ways that enable an individual to reveal who they are. Mass flourishing occurs in a dynamic economy where these humanist values fuel the necessary desires and attitudes for innovation and growth.

Phelps fears (and presents data to support those fears) that these values are being eroded in today’s America. Opposing values are gaining ground. There is considerable dissatisfaction among many participants in the modern economy. There appears to be a falloff in the non-material rewards of work. Household surveys show losses in reported job satisfaction and life satisfaction. There is a loss in the sense of agency, of the experience of succeeding at something and the sense of voyaging into the unknown. Some sociologists point to a rising narcissism among young people that makes them self-indulgent. They place more value on trying to be someone than on trying to do something.

We may be losing the dynamism of indigenous innovation that leads to mass flourishing. Check your attitude.

 

 

99. Scott Livengood Reframes Entrepreneurship for New Audiences

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Why isn’t everyone an entrepreneur? Perhaps we don’t explain it well enough or in language that lets everyone in on the wonders and the thrills of the pursuit of new economic value.

Scott Livengood chooses reframing — thinking in new and different ways about an established concept — to widen the audience for entrepreneurship.

Key Takeaways & Actionable Insights

Reframing entrepreneurship in the context of popular culture.

Scott recently published a multimedia e-book called The Startup of Seinfeld. In the book he articulates a comprehensive survey of concepts and principles of entrepreneurship, including the entrepreneurial mindset, risk and uncertainty, intellectual property, business models, planning, finance, and many more.

The cultural frame Scott selected is everyday city life as illustrated by the characters and situations and market interactions in 180 episodes of Seinfeld. In Scott’s hands, this is not a show about nothing, but about entrepreneurship.

The multimedia approach is facilitated by a series of links in the e-book to YouTube video clips of short scenes from multiple Seinfeld episodes that are illustrative of entrepreneurial concepts and principles. You’ll find the concepts of economic calculation, opportunity, product design, arbitrage, intellectual property, judgment, planning, uncertainty, and several more. The text accompanying the videos is an exposition of economic principles underlying these concepts.

There’s a lot to learn, and it’s fun! A major point to take away is that entrepreneurship is everyday life: people imagining new ways to serve others and meet their needs, and employing design and economic calculation, judgment under uncertainty and marketing and communications to facilitate a valuable exchange.

Reframing the teaching of entrepreneurship and strategy.

The philosophy underpinning the teaching method in the e-book has been forged in the university classes and seminars that Scott teaches, and for which he prepares meticulously and conducts comparative research into learning and teaching effectiveness.

He has found that embedding the principles of entrepreneurial economics and business strategy in cultural iconography illustrated via multimedia technology results in a significant increase in student engagement, participation, learning, and understanding. Humor, for example, is a language and a style that can draw students in, engage them at a deeper level of curiosity, and help to deliver the serious economic message.

This kind of approach helps students think of entrepreneurship as more of a normal life choice for themselves — a life of creative problem-solving. Students can think about their ends and the means open to them in a different way. If they are inclined to “social entrepreneurship”, they can learn that that simply means a distinctive identification of ends, without any attempt to operate outside the profit-and-loss system of sound entrepreneurial practice.

Reframing entrepreneurship for the disadvantaged.

Scott’s ultimate test for reframing entrepreneurship for a different audience in a different culture has been presented by his teaching for Education for Humanity. This is group associated with his university, Arizona State, and dedicated to helping displaced refugees. These students who are displaced from their homelands by war and conflict and find themselves in refugee camps in countries that are alien to them, like Uganda and Lebanon. Their prospects for further education are narrow. What are the pathways out of the poverty and restrictions of refugee camp life?

Scott’s chosen task is to teach them entrepreneurship. Where to start? The basis is empathy — digging deep to understand their situation, circumstances, and context, and understanding them as individuals and identifying their needs and wants. Language becomes critical — using concepts and examples they can relate to.

It’s contextually impractical to teach entrepreneurial finance in terms of bank loans and venture capital. But Scott can teach individual and family budgeting: how to calculate and manage income and expenditures, how to save, how to build up sufficient savings to make a capital purchase, and how to generate an income stream from that capital. The particular capital artifact may be a second cow for a head of household that uses the first one for feeding the family. The family has knowledge and skills in milking and animal husbandry that can be put to use in their new entrepreneurial business of selling milk and dairy products to other families, or bartering for other kinds of nourishment.

Eventually, the family may advance to the use of micro-loans or other forms of micro-finance and expand their entrepreneurial holdings. Scott can now teach about the trust nexus of paying interest and paying back loans, and about return on investment and capital accumulation. Progress comes quickly as a result of starting in the right place.

Entrepreneurial communities.

One of Scott’s realizations has been the power of entrepreneurial communities. In the refugee camps, family entrepreneurs collaborate, learn together, assist each other, and seek to raise the prospects of the entire community. Failure to pay back a loan, for example, would be a setback for the group, and group norms and institutions arise to guard against such a loss of trust.

Scott sees direct application of this learning about normative entrepreneurial community action in other parts of the world, including rural communities here in North and Central America, and in the inner city initiative of Entrepreneur Zones in the US.

By embedding entrepreneurship in culture, the collaborative service ethic emerges more clearly and emphatically.

Free Downloads & Extras From The Episode

Enjoy Scott Livengood’s book about the culture, concepts, and principles of entrepreneurship: The Startup Of Seinfeld: A Multimedia Approach to Learning Entrepreneurship: Get It Here

Read the work of Nobel prize-winner Edmund Phelps, mentioned in the podcast introduction, on Mass Flourishing and economic Dynamism.

“The Austrian Business Model” (video): https://e4epod.com/model

Start Your Own Entrepreneurial Journey

Ready to put Austrian Economics knowledge from the podcast to work for your business? Start your own entrepreneurial journey.

Enjoying The Podcast? Review, Subscribe & Listen On Your Favorite Platform:

Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify