One of the central characteristics to Austrian economics is entrepeneurship, yet there is little or no practical information to starting up a business from Mises. Most of what is on Mises forums and the books in store is positve and normative economic theory, and most books on the subject in local bookshops I feel are too vague. Due to either non-existance or vagueness from Mises and the local bookshops respectively I feel that i have to learn it by trial and error and this I find frustrating because this takes up precious time.
Granted all businesses are different and most people do eventually start up businesses if they persevere however I think there are many pitfalls and essential things to know and alot of people get caught out by them because they simply didnt know to begin with. I also think its why many businesses dont get off the ground because of a lack of knowledge of business start up. Starting a business is the initial step that all businesses make and yet I think it has been neglected somewhat.
I think we need to work on developing the quickest and most efficient way of starting up a business. Like Taylorism and Fordism which focused on making management efficent i.e. when the business is already up and running, WE need to start developing business start up methods.
Austrian economics purposely doesn’t explain how to be a successful entrepreneur, though. Business is a whole field of study separate from economics, and I’m not even sure that entrepreneurship is something that can be taught (Israel Kirzner talks about this). I mean, if you have a will and a desire to write a guide to entrepreneurship or what-have-you, you absolutely should, but it’s not part of economics proper.
Entrepreneurship is not really a system in itself, but a useful descriptor for the one man visionary who founds a business, big or small. This entrepreneurial spirit is a logical outcome of human action as described by Mises – but only that. The ultimate success of a business rests on the characteristics (personality) of the individual owner and how effectively he can judge the future, co-ordinate resources and marshal employees (and so on). Many of them fail because of incomplete market information, government meddling or general overestimation of their own prospects. Such is the way of the market.
You simply cannot read a book, take an exam and become the next Richard Branson overnight anymore than you could become the next Van Gogh. The ability to have an idea and see it manifest into a Ferrari or an iMac requires an innate talent that only some possess. The Viennese (Austrian) School is only concerned with identifying those individuals and advocating that they are permitted to unleash their dynamism on an economy as they are much more effective agents of societal wellbeing than a government or corporatist bureaucrat could ever be.
(Naturally, business schools can only churn out overqualified managers and are at a loss with entrepreneurial concept. They try to package it into a convenient set of rules – do A, B or C and get E – and crush the budding ‘entrepreneur’ who doesn’t understand why his list of those rules fail to work in the real world.)