1) Start-Up Chile and BarcelonaActiva are launching programs to attract global entrepreneurs to their regions by providing funding, visas, workspaces, and support services in order to boost their economies through entrepreneurship. Start-Up Chile has provided $50 million in grants to fund 25 entrepreneurial teams from around the world in its first round. 2) Entrepreneurship is described as a scarce and valuable resource that drives economic growth and development more so than factors like innovation or clusters. Countries should directly invest in growing entrepreneurship rather than indirect support systems. 3) When entrepreneurs succeed, they generate more entrepreneurship through investing in other startups or becoming serial entrepreneurs themselves, making entrepreneurship a renewable

1. The Babson Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Project
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Entrepreneurship is the New Gold Rush:
Mining a Renewable Resource
Daniel Isenberg, Ph.D.
Professor of Management Practice, Babson Global
Executive Director, the Babson Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Project
December 8, 2010
While the price of the glittering metal clanks noisily through the $1400 ceiling in London and New York,
a rush to corner the market on a natural resource of a different sort is starting in Santiago, Chile, and
Barcelona, Spain; not for precious metal but for precious mettle. Entrepreneurship. Emprendimiento
Entrepreneurship is the scarce and valuable resource of today’s societies, driving economic growth and
social development. Rather than being the result of “national competiveness,” “clusters,” the
“knowledge economy,” and “innovation systems,” – policy makers’ present palavers—entrepreneurship
is their root cause. Policy makers must understand entrepreneurship causes economic development,
creates the foundations for sustainable clusters, and creates national and regional competitiveness and
innovation; not the other way around.
With that in mind, ambitious new organizations such as Start-up Chile and BarcelonaActiva are mining
the world’s “entrepreneurial supply chain” to capture as much entrepreneurship as they can, with the
belief that globally-oriented entrepreneurs will kick-start the next entrepreneurial revolutions in Latin
America and Europe.
$50 million in cold cash. In November, Start-Up Chile opened its arms to the first crop of 25 ambitious
teams of young entrepreneurs from 13 countries, including France, China, Portugal, Spain, Israel, and
India, with their exciting ideas in tow. According to Nicolas Shea, who came back from Silicon Valley to
turn his idea for Start-Up Chile into a reality, "Today it is about global entrepreneurship. Unlike countries
such as Ireland or India, the Chilean ‘Diaspora’ is very small, so we need to accelerate with people from
all around the world. “
So rather than erecting fences and legislation to exclude them, the Chilean government greeted these
future immigrant-entrepreneurs with $40K grants, one-year resident visas, a launch pad, networking to
resources, and non-financial support from a dedicated professional business development team. All of
this with no-strings attached. The new project spawned by the Ministry of Economics’ InnovaChile will
ramp the number of teams from 25 to 100 and then to 1000 as Start-Up Chile, with an investment of
$50 million in cold cash to rapidly seed the country’s ripe environment with a global strain of
entrepreneurs.
Do it in Barcelona. Whereas Start-Up Chile provides hard currency, Barcelona Activa’s “Do It In
Barcelona” program reaches out to future entrepreneurial Argonauts with softer support, such as
coaching, English-language access to local resources, training, and various office and business spaces,
including a venture incubator and venture-friendly temporary space. Already many hundreds of foreign
________________________________________________________________________
revolution@babson.edu
© 2010 Daniel Isenberg
+1 (781) 239-6290

2. The Babson Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Project
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start-ups have come to Barcelona to check it out, and more than 60 (one third) of Activa’s venture
incubator residents, are foreign, mostly from Germany, US, UK, and Netherlands.
Hoping the best of these crops will take root and even cross-pollinate the local flora, these bold
experiments are consistent with my own and others’ observation that, throughout the world
entrepreneurs tend to concentrate in “watering holes,” where different species of startups gain
sustenance to grow and prosper. One of the best examples is the for-profit Cambridge [USA] Innovation
Center where, according to co-founder Tim Rowe, 300 startup tenants are happily packed into 3 floors
of a building opposite MIT. And where the entrepreneurs gather, the capital, support professionals,
educators, and customers are close behind. Of course, an elaborate entrepreneurship ecosystem has
evolved over decades in Kendall Square in Cambridge, and CIC is both a cause and effect. So in parallel
to packing in these high potential startups, Start-up Chile and Barcelona Activa will have make sure to
foment the entire ecosystem in parallel.
As Start-Up Chile’s Shea starkly puts it: “Entrepreneurship is the single most important variable in the
innovation equation.” In fact, entrepreneurship’s “spillovers” go far beyond innovation and even
economics, as many entrepreneurs give back to society through philanthropy (a la the Giving Pledge) or
public service (a la NYC’s Mayor Bloomberg and Chile’s own President Pinera). And when they succeed,
entrepreneurs also like to create more and more entrepreneurship, either by serial venturing or
nurturing others’ startups with advice or investment, so that success breeds success, and
entrepreneurship becomes a renewable resource as well as a valuable one.
As economist Schumpeter told us 70 years ago, entrepreneurship is the positive economic force that
“destructs” old industries to pave way for innovation and progress. So policy makers are well advised to
treat entrepreneurship as a strategic natural resource for their societies, and create ambitious programs
like Barcelona Activa and Start-Up Chile that foster it. Rather than invest billions in ephemeral national
innovation systems or ineffective economic cluster strategies, public leaders should be directly investing
in tangible entrepreneurial resources that create lasting value.
Long ago Mark Twain quipped, “Iron ore cannot be educated into gold,” nor does it need to be. The real
resource, entrepreneurship, can be owned, sown, grown, and educated. So while speculators are
protecting their assets by sinking them into a glittering metal, let’s remember that all that glitters is not
gold, and let’s secure our futures by creating a lot more entrepreneurs.
Daniel Isenberg is the founding Executive Director of the Babson Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Project and Professor
of Management Practice at Babson Global. Professor Isenberg has taught at Harvard, Columbia, INSEAD, Technion,
and Reykjavik. From 1987-2004 he lived in Israel and contributed to the entrepreneurial revolution there as an
entrepreneur, venture capitalist, consultant, and educator. A frequent Harvard Business Review contributor, in
June, 2010 Harvard Business Review featured Professor Isenberg’s “How to Start an Entrepreneurial Revolution” as
the “Big Idea” lead article. His popular blogs have appeared in Forbes, Huffington Post, Economist, and Harvard
Business Review Online.
________________________________________________________________________
revolution@babson.edu
© 2010 Daniel Isenberg
+1 (781) 239-6290