Even treating the UK as homogeneous is silly - even within somewhere as small as Scotland there is a huge amount of difference in how people view entrepreneurship depending on which region you are in:
- Post-industrial Glasgow
- Finance and government based Edinburgh
- Oil oriented Aberdeen
- Farming/fishing/tourism of the Highlands
In fact the very first time I heard anyone talking about trying to get finance for a business was a school friend of mine when we were 20 - he was trying to raise enough money to buy his own fishing trawler.
I grew up in an environment in the North of Scotland where there were no large employers and a lot of small independent businesses - starting your own business wasn't seem as a big deal.
Of course the UK isn't homogeneous - there's obviously an enduring entrepreneurial spirit everywhere. My only point was that (as a social convention) people with aspirations behave differently there than they would in (say) New York.
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Even treating the UK as homogeneous is silly - even within somewhere as small as Scotland there is a huge amount of difference in how people view entrepreneurship depending on which region you are in:
- Post-industrial Glasgow
- Finance and government based Edinburgh
- Oil oriented Aberdeen
- Farming/fishing/tourism of the Highlands
In fact the very first time I heard anyone talking about trying to get finance for a business was a school friend of mine when we were 20 - he was trying to raise enough money to buy his own fishing trawler.
I grew up in an environment in the North of Scotland where there were no large employers and a lot of small independent businesses - starting your own business wasn't seem as a big deal.
Of course the UK isn't homogeneous - there's obviously an enduring entrepreneurial spirit everywhere. My only point was that (as a social convention) people with aspirations behave differently there than they would in (say) New York.
But there is no single "there" - that's my point.