If We Build It, Will They Come? And Who, Exactly, Are They?

by John Weckerle

In the 1989 film Field of Dreams (a film well liked by your editor), farmer Ray Kinsella (played by Kevin Costner) undergoes a supernatural journey in which a voice whispering “If you build it, he will come” leads him to plow under part of his farm and build a baseball field.  Much transpires, and as time goes on the field is populated by the spirits of baseball players gone by, including Ray’s father.  Author Terrance Mann, played by James Earl Jones, asserts that people will come, even though they won’t know why, and pay to simply be there – and in the end, a stream of automobiles, miles long, is seen headed for the field.

“If you build it, they will come” has to some extent been a bit of a mantra among the economic development community – with the right incentives, infrastructure, amenities, etc., who could resist coming here (wherever “here” may be)?  The problem, however, is that every community/region/state, etc. has incentives and amenities to offer.  The competition is fierce, and it can be difficult to score an advantage over equally hungry community with just a bit more to offer – or an urban area that can offer much more, both to owners and employees.  And people tend to have ideas regarding what is to be built, and to whom it must be sold.  In our earlier article on economic development in the Estancia Valley, we referenced a September 4 article from local newspaper The Independent reporting on a presentation by Estancia Valley Economic Development Association Executive (EVEDA) Director Myra Pancrazio.  As stated in the article:

What those high-paid millenial workers at Google want, Pancrazio said, is retail shops and mixed-use development, like master-planned communities that combine residential with retail and open space. “Quality of life,” she said to the Moriarty council, adding, “Homes, homes, homes, homes.”

We likely join our readers in a certain sense of suspense, wondering what what strategy is forthcoming from this realization.  The article indicates that EVEDA is now considering pursuit of retail companies, something it has “not done much so far.”  We’ll note that one of the areas in which the region – for the most part, Edgewood – has succeeded is in retail, all on its own.

We digress, perhaps a bit, because our focus today is not on the “what” (we’ll get back to that another time), but the “who.” And maybe the “why.” When we first read The Independent’s article, we decided to take a look not only at what might attract entrepreneurs (and we’ll go on record that shops, good restaurants, etc. are attractive to anybody), but who those entrepreneurs might be. And as it turns out, they may not be who the regional experts plan to target.  “Millennials” (depending on the source, birth years run from the early 1980s to around 2000) definitely include their share of entrepreneurs.  However, a number of sources, including the 2015 edition of The Kauffman Index: Startup Activity, National Trends suggests that perhaps there is more to it than meets the eye of the local econovelopers.

We’ll note that the Kauffman report examines 3-year averages, which dampens down some of the volatility that is common to many economic data sets.  Examining “unfiltered” data, which includes both entrepreneurs pursuing opportunity and those going into business by necessity (lost jobs, running out of unemployment benefits, etc.) as well as data strictly involving opportunistic entrepreneurs, some intriguing information comes forward. In the unfiltered realm, substantially more men than women create startups, and from the standpoint of ethnicity (the report incorrectly expresses this as race), Latinos lead the pack in terms of starting up businesses.  Immigrants create more startups than native-born folk. With respect to age, the lowest rate of startups is actually associated with those 20 to 34 years of age, and the rest of the age populations tend to leapfrog each other over time.  And almost incredibly (unless you actually read the text of the report, of course), the least educated segment of the populations (“less than high school”) outstrips the more highly schooled populations.

Looking next at the filtered data, which excludes those who essentially start businesses for reasons other than absolute necessity, other patterns emerge.  More women than men start up enterprises by a substantial margin; people of Asian descent lead in terms of ethnicity/race; more educated people somewhat narrowly lead in terms of startups; and foreign-born and native-born folk are in a dead heat.  In terms of age, the group from age 53 to 64 outstrips all other age groups. And as the Harvard Business Review notes:

Twice as many successful entrepreneurs are over 50 as under 25. The vast majority — 75 percent — have more than six years of industry experience and half have more than 10 years when they create their startup,” says Duke University scholar Vivek Wadhwa, who studied 549 successful technology ventures. Meanwhile, data from the Kauffman Foundation indicates the highest rate of entrepreneurship in America has shifted to the 55-64 age group, with people over 55 almost twice as likely to found successful companies than those between 20 and 34.

We’ll refer readers to our earlier article on the departure of Google’s solar drone project so that they can take a look at some regional demographic information.  We see a certain commonality between our local demographics and some of the groups of entrepreneurs in the Kauffman report.  And lest we be uniquely branded as merchants of doom and gloom, we refer our readers to this Washington Post article on New Mexico’s economic situation, published in January 2014.   And we’d like to put forth an idea: as a place to which entrepreneurs might bring their companies, perhaps the Estancia Valley is not quite ready to receive them – but on the other hand, if one were looking for an pool of potential entrepreneurs ready to start up, based on the demographics, just exactly where else should one look?

As has been the case in many places, those dedicated to economic development here in the Estancia Valley and East Mountains should perhaps move into a listening mode.  There will always be projects in which partners from elsewhere are needed – hotels, and so on are a prime example – but the entire idea of economic development should always be to enhance the lives of and opportunities for those who live here in the first place.  We may face challenges in attracting businesses, but perhaps we can help grow them, instead.

Let us talk about
Name and Mail are required
Join the discuss

I'm not a robot (enter numbers) *