Robert runs a conference called “Reversing the Arrow,” which brings together a close-knit group of creative entrepreneurship scholars who are thinking about innovating at entrepreneurial innovation  Anita asked Robert what “reversing the arrow” means, and what he is achieving with this initiative.

Robert explained that ‘Reversing the Arrow’ is really about how the word “entrepreneurship” means something much broader and more behavioral than just starting new companies.  What it means, he has learned, is “being individualistic” in the sense of taking responsibility for outcomes and being scrappy to the point of achieving unprecedented business success.  This has become, particularly in the business school lexicon, about creativity, emancipation and social change.     In their conversation, Robert remarked with some energy:  This can be awful!    Being on a team is what feels great.   What we’re doing – at least in a broad sense – is justifying a mythic journey of personal heroism that almost always ends in failure, although when it succeeds, it is remarkable.  

In their conversation, Robert talked with Anita about the working conditions of his grandparents in the coal mines of the United States:  Piece work.   No sick pay.  No childcare.  No healthcare.   No unions.  No regulations.    He analogized this to Uber driving today.   We celebrate this as a reframing of what’s bad to make it into something good.   We are trying to convince those most harmed by the system to want to pursue it anyway.   It’s a false promise of opportunity.

Robert went on to explain that the problem of climate change is not fundamentally or primarily technological.  Rather, he said, it is political and social.  

Anita asked Robert about his experiences in government.

Robert is working with the Government of Japan, which has admired the US’s model of Silicon Valley entrepreneurship in a way that is paradoxical.   He described how Japan’s strongest industries are in production machinery:  Robotics, conveyer assemblies, etc.   It’s the source of the strength of the Japanese economy, and the large companies that dominate in Japan are equalizing of incomes, by the way.   This stands in strong contrast to the conditions in Silicon Valley, where real estate values are so high that only incredibly wealthy tech-co execs can afford to live there.   Inequality of income is so rampant in Silicon Valley as to defy Japanese cultural traditions.  So it’s hard to make sense of the Japanese interest in reconstituting Silicon Valley in Japan.  What seems to be going on here, Robert said, is more ideological and social than economic.  

The conversation landed on this point that we need a much more informed cultural and social and historical understanding of the conditions that give rise to excitement about the entrepreneur as a cultural force.   What we’re yearning for is a way through the problems that our cultures have created but, as Robert suggestions, there is no solution in a kind of heroic entrepreneurship that cannot generate a broad range of opportunities.