Table of contents:

1. Business Creation: Wall Street and Main Street
2. Business Creation: Scope and Stability
3. Business Creation and Economic Growth: Churning is Good
4. New Firms are the Major Source of New Jobs
5. Different National Development: Different Business Creation
6. Context Counts, But May be Hard to Change
7. Growth Firms and Job Redistribution
8. Money is Necessary, But Not Sufficient
9. Everyone Pays, Some Benefit a Lot
10. An Important Option for the Desperate
11. New Firms: Change Agents Hiding in Plain Sight

Policy makers give a lot of attention to business creation and entrepreneurship, but they do not have a good resource for understanding The Truth about Entrepreneurship. The extensive media coverage of Wall Street entrepreneurship provides an incomplete portrayal of most business creation. While both high profile and everyday new firms provide major contributions to economic growth, the ongoing, bottoms-up activity pursued by over half a billion around the world is not widely recognized. This book reviews some of the most salient features of grass roots business creation, such as the total amount of activity, differences related to national economic development, the relationship to business churning and job creation, the impact of national context, the mixed contributions of high growth firms, the modest effect of external financial support, the unequal distribution of sunk costs related to successful payback, importance as an option for the most desperate in poor countries, and the tendency to overlook the continuing incremental impact of Main Street business creation. Entrepreneurial scholars, faculty, policy analysists and graduate students interested in economic development, entrepreneurship and public policy will find clarity and gain a depth of knowledge about policy making and business creation with The Truth about Entrepreneurship.