The Next American Frontier
The entire world seems to be heading toward points of inflection. The developing world is embarking on the digital age. The developed world is entering the Internet era. And the United States, once again at the vanguard, is on the verge of becoming the world’s first Entrepreneurial Nation.
At the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893, Frederick Jackson Turner delivered a paper to the American Historical Association – the most famous ever by an American historian. In “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” he noted that, according to the most recent U.S. census, so much of the nation had been settled that there was no longer an identifiable western migration. The very notion of a “frontier” was obsolete.
What Turner couldn’t guess was that the unexplored prairie would become the uninvented new product, the unexploited new market and the untried new business plan.
The most compelling statistic of all? Half of all new college graduates now believe that self-employment is more secure than a full-time job. Today, 80% of the colleges and universities in the U.S. now offer courses on entrepreneurship; 60% of Gen Y business owners consider themselves to be serial entrepreneurs, according to Inc. magazine. Tellingly, 18 to 24-year-olds are starting companies at a faster rate than 35 to 44-year-olds. And 70% of today’s high schoolers intend to start their own companies, according to a Gallup poll.
An upcoming wave of new workers in our society will never work for an established company if they can help it. To them, having a traditional job is one of the biggest career failures they can imagine.
Photo by Ryan Inzana.
Tamara on May 29th, 2008 6:44 am
Though i agree that there are more money if you are self employed, having a work history with an established company is also essential if you are applying for something that needs to see your employment history.
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