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Dona L Ìý0:07 Ìý
Welcome to another episode of creative distillation. Your hosts, Jeff and Brad, from the University of Colorado, Boulder's Leeds School of Business, discuss entrepreneurship research while enjoying fine craft beverages. Welcome to season six of creative distillation. We're excited to belly up to the bar and bring you another round of scintillating, spirited discussions with exceptional guests from all corners of academia, holding forth about entrepreneurship research and how it applies to the real world. We begin with longtime friend of the podcast, Bob Eberhart, Associate Professor of Management and faculty director of the Ahlers Center at the University of San Diego. He's also the founder of the reversing the arrow conference, the seventh annual gathering, which examines the social effects of entrepreneurship, took place right here in Boulder this summer, and our first batch of episodes this season was recorded on location there over Some very classy, retiring yet aggressive candrosay, Bob regels, our hosts on the origin of reversing the arrow, the quality to price ratio of Costco wine, how entrepreneurship is about solving problems as opposed to just starting companies, And why not every entrepreneurship student should become an entrepreneur, all of that and much more. In this episode of creative distillation, enjoy and cheers.

Brad Ìý1:51 Ìý
Welcome to Creative distillation, where we distill entrepreneurship research into actionable insights. I am your co host, Jeff York, Faculty Director at the Leeds School of Business, dimming Center for Entrepreneurship, joined, as always, by

Brad Warner and Jeff. Are you still associate dean, though, or just the faculty director,

I am somehow still associate dean of strategic initiatives. Sounds really important, doesn't it? It

sounds that way. Yeah,

you look impressed. Our guest was wowed by that.

Bob Eberhart Ìý2:18 Ìý
I was wild. I can't say done to be here. I'm gonna

Brad Ìý2:22 Ìý
have to leave Robert Bob Eberhart, who we've we is a two timer. Second time on those ideas, we'll revisit that previous episode. Yeah, rewind back to the pandemic days we'll talk

about. And by the way, they should rewind to listen to this. They should rewind to

listen that, because there's a great episode. Is really interesting. Bob is Professor of Management and the faculty director at the ollars Center of International Business at the University of San Diego, canal School of Business. Wow, you

Bob Eberhart Ìý2:54 Ìý
did it. Canal. I did it.

Brad Ìý2:59 Ìý
My promotion. Let's talk a little bit about the setting. But you guys want me to give you your wine, right? So

we can pour and talk at the same time,

Bob Eberhart Ìý3:09 Ìý
distill. Can have your own cans,

Brad Ìý3:14 Ìý
cans of wine. Let's see. And it says on here, let's see where this can takes us. This is, yes, is a local business called the infinite monkey theorem. They're based in Boulder, and I don't know that much about them, but they don't actually ferment the wine. They vent it and pack it. And they were one of the first businesses in the United States to can wine. And has this issue. Is it bad? Oh, no.

Bob Eberhart Ìý3:40 Ìý
Well, as you know, I distributed wine for seven years. Well, I don't know you told me this wine, dude, first time wine in a can me too. Yeah. So ever, ever.

Brad Ìý3:52 Ìý
Well, we're trying to, we're having a rose, a it looks like a rose, but it looks like, well, I don't know anything about Rosa, so you have to educate.

Bob Eberhart Ìý3:59 Ìý
The aroma is retiring yet aggressive.

Brad Ìý4:03 Ìý
Retiring yet aggressive.

I'm gonna stick with the aggressive part.

They're not a sponsor, unlike, unlike liquid mechanics and lovely Lafayette. Yeah, liquid mechanics brewing, check them up, and they a fantastic beer, which I have one if we can't drink the

Bob Eberhart Ìý4:24 Ìý
wine. No, let me tell you what, really okay, because I was scared, Bob,

Brad Ìý4:28 Ìý
you told me what, Bob's gonna tell me.

Bob Eberhart Ìý4:31 Ìý
You told me what this was and how it was made. I was terrified. But I gotta say, this actually wasn't a drink good stuff. I think it's pretty good. It's pretty good.

Brad Ìý4:40 Ìý
I don't like wine really. How many? Okay, so how many times have we drink wine on the podcast?

Never, but I didn't know. But we drank it

once, once, now we're on the second

time. I didn't know. Was your dislike of wine versus I love wines.

I love them. What do you like about this? Like, what is it I can. Describe. I've been describing to you for 60 plus episodes, right? What I like about weird beer? Well, first, I'd

Bob Eberhart Ìý5:04 Ìý
be afraid that it was sweet, and it's not. It carries just about the right amount of residual sugar to make it a good, pleasant wine. The other thing is, it does carry some decent amount of floral accents, which I sort of like, which should belong in a Roset. Okay, so cool. So, even it must be here and we give a thumbs up. Yeah, yeah. Thumbs up. But

Brad Ìý5:23 Ìý
the thing is, most rose should taste the same. It's not like some of the craft beers that we drink or some of the more aged wines. For the most part, 80% of the roses should be very, very

soon. And is rose a good choice for, say, a summer night here at the lovely chicken?

Bob Eberhart Ìý5:36 Ìý
It's perfect. It's an unbelievable choice. And by the way, if it isn't a perfect choice. Let's pretend

Brad Ìý5:49 Ìý
I care deeply. So welcome to season six. I say that question because I can't believe we've done six seasons. You were here kicking off season six.

Bob Eberhart Ìý6:01 Ìý
I can't believe it, and I'm kicking it to the ground, right? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Ìý6:08 Ìý
We are here at a conference that I think it's more than fair to say. Bob is the father of the reversing the arrow conference. And we were at the lovely Chautauqua retreat. And I, you know, we were trying to line up a lovely, a nice Chautauqua historian who would tell us all about the Chautauqua movement, how it came about, why this is a National Historic Landmark producer, Joel is going to tell you about that instead right now. So tell us, Joel, by the way, if you're interested in what Joel has to say, you might want to check out JDS joyrides and check out some of the murals around boulder. One of our Official sponsors, jdsjoyride.com, check them out. E bike with Joel. And by the way, he probably

Brad Ìý6:47 Ìý
take you up to Chautauqua.

Joel Davis Ìý6:48 Ìý
I do. I bring people up here regularly. Was one of my favorite places. It's a major part of Boulder. And if I was, if I if you had one hour to spend in Boulder, I would tell you to come to Chautauqua Park. Because first of all, you've got the flat irons, the backdrop of the flat irons, the iconic view from Boulder, the iconic image of Boulder, and all that access to those trails, dozens, if not hundreds, of miles of trails right out the door. And then you've got the Chautauqua side of Chautauqua Park, this cluster of cottages, the dining hall, the auditorium, and all of this has been around since 1898 the park just celebrated its 120/5 anniversary last year, and it was part of the Chautauqua movement, which started in upstate New York in the 1870s and ran Till roughly the 1930s and it's movement dedicated to the ideals of learning for all uplifting entertainment. And my favorite useful leisure, useful leisure in a natural and inspiring setting,

Bob Eberhart Ìý7:54 Ìý
is that what we're doing now

Brad Ìý7:55 Ìý
is this useful leisure, absolutely useful

Joel Davis Ìý7:58 Ìý
every night, for me is and so these Chautauqua started in upstate New York, and they spread across the country, and people would travel to these different chautauquas for art and poetry and plays, and Roseanna can and Roseanna can conversation. And it was just an entertaining, edifying community thing, and it was very inclusive, so all were invited, and it was something that Teddy Roosevelt called the most American thing in America. And it's a movement that I think could use a revival right now.

Bob Eberhart Ìý8:33 Ìý
Do we still get poetry?

Joel Davis Ìý8:34 Ìý
We still get poetry, all right? It was a man from Nantucket. Oh,

Brad Ìý8:40 Ìý
wasn't this one. This one has some roots with Texas on it.

Joel Davis Ìý8:42 Ìý
This one was the Colorado Chautauqua, yeah, the location of which was competed for by many Colorado towns in the 1890s Yeah, take that Colorado Springs boulder one. It was established by the Texas School teachers association because they were looking for a place to plan for their following academic year that wasn't in boiling Texas,

Brad Ìý9:07 Ìý
much like Brad's summer

Joel Davis Ìý9:10 Ìý
planning the academic year. And so the Colorado catalyst founded in 1898 and day one really just an integral part of Boulder's history and natural beauty and cultural fabric. And again, if you come to town, even for an afternoon, you've got to come to Chautauqua. And there's really no better way to get here, because in the summer, it's very difficult to find a parking spot. There's really no better possibly get here. Oh, an E

Brad Ìý9:40 Ìý
bike, but I don't have any big hill.

Joel Davis Ìý9:42 Ìý
I'm here a bike show. Where would you get a bike? JD, joyride sponsor, well, and I would love to take all of you academics and scholars and boozers and

Brad Ìý9:58 Ìý
or boozers or entrepreneurs. Yeah.

Joel Davis Ìý10:01 Ìý
And entrepreneurs for a ride around this beautiful town and up to Chautauqua. Hey, Joel,

Brad Ìý10:06 Ìý
how long have you lived in Boulder?

Joel Davis Ìý10:08 Ìý
I moved to Colorado and to Boulder in 1986 oh, and

Brad Ìý10:12 Ìý
so you've seen boulder change quite a bit. I have seen, have you seen Chautauqua change?

Joel Davis Ìý10:16 Ìý
Chautauqua? No, has not changed much.

Brad Ìý10:18 Ìý
It's more crowded, though, right?

Joel Davis Ìý10:20 Ìý
It's a little more crowded, a little harder to get a parking spot. But

Brad Ìý10:22 Ìý
this camp, get a parking spot,

Joel Davis Ìý10:24 Ìý
but these cabins are 125 years old, and, yeah, no, Chautauqua has not changed. So that's much at all. It's totally how

Brad Ìý10:30 Ìý
I fell in love with boulders, like, actually, because I came here, I was visiting someone Montana, and we came through boulder to see a friend and was going to do this thing at CU and they put me in this horrible hotel. We had, like, our two children, and, like, we had to put one child in, like, a packing plate in the closet because the room was so small and there was no air conditioning. It was brutal. And we were like, oh, we gotta get the hell out of here. I was like, how do I go stay up there? Like, look at the flowers. And so he's like, Oh, this is Chautauqua. So I just called him. I like, I don't care. I wanted to be there. Gave us this awesome cabin that goes right onto the trail. That's great. I went out and hiked, hiked the first flat iron actually ran, because I could only be away from the kids. They were very small for the amount of time. My wife was like, why am I run up to the first flat iron? Probably die if I tried to do that today. But I just like, was like, Man, I want to live here. This is an amazing place, yeah. And I had my son's rehearsal dinner here. Yeah, so this is great. Keep rich for the Chautauqua. Thanks for the history moment there. Joel, we can always count on you. Yeah,

the way back, man,

Joel Davis Ìý11:29 Ìý
I can also take you to Mork and Mindy's house.Ìý

Brad Ìý11:31 Ìý
Whoa, now we're talking seriously,

but that was Boulder, right? Yeah,

that's right. I mean, Bob, yeah. Well, like go over to Morgan. I

Bob Eberhart Ìý11:38 Ìý
want, I mean, that's the only reason I'm here.

Brad Ìý11:43 Ìý
Why are you here?

Bob Eberhart Ìý11:47 Ìý
The canned rose, definitely sharp edge on it kicking this off. Yeah, there's this sharp edge of the camera.

Brad Ìý11:54 Ìý
Yeah, nothing but classy. Here. I was gonna offer a previous guest some Prosecco from Kirkland brand, Costco, but I didn't do

Bob Eberhart Ìý12:03 Ìý
that, by the way, though, Costco does have some great wines. Costco actually does make serve great wine. Yes, I sold a lot of wines to Costco as a career, as a business, really, and they were very picky. Yeah. And not only that, I know for sure, because I know the pricing structure, you're actually getting a fair deal. Yes, well, I should have bought it. No. I mean, there's some that are gonna buy wine. I'll buy it at Costco. Yeah, and I've sold wine for you for a decade. Yeah, you could spend 3000 bucks on a bottle of wine at Costco. Okay, well, I'm not good, but it's going to be the same 14% markup that the $3 Chardonnay.

Brad Ìý12:36 Ìý
I said $300 on these four cans of Rose. That seemed like good

Bob Eberhart Ìý12:39 Ìý
value. Okay, well, you

Brad Ìý12:43 Ìý
know what? I just came in from South of France. Jeff, so you should have just asked me,

no, I didn't. From now on, Brad, when we have a wine episode, you're in charge. Done. All right, great. So that's established. Now we're kicking off season six. This is very exciting. We're going to be bringing you a series of episodes, starting with this one. They're going to come from two conferences. The first one is called reversing the arrow, and I think it's very fair to say Bob is the founder and father of that. We're going to talk a little bit about the history of that. And then we're going after a few episodes from that conference, we're going to be bringing you conference episodes from the Global Entrepreneurship and Innovation Research Conference, which we'll be hosting over at CU so it's a really exciting week for entrepreneurship research here in Boulder, and it's going to be a great kickoff to our season six. So I'm really excited about it. So Bob, yeah, this conference has never been anywhere except for, like, at your house

Bob Eberhart Ìý13:34 Ìý
in Lake Tahoe, yeah, right, my Lake Tahoe home, like, literally

Brad Ìý13:38 Ìý
at your

Bob Eberhart Ìý13:38 Ìý
house, yeah? This is, this is fantastic. I mean, what a wonderful venue. And like I was telling you on the walk here, I can't get over the fact that I don't know most of the people here at the conference,

Brad Ìý13:51 Ìý
nor do I Bob. So we're over there. When we first started this

Bob Eberhart Ìý13:54 Ìý
thing, you know, it was invite, know everybody, and then a great with their friends. So I knew everybody

Brad Ìý14:01 Ìý
This time for sure. So who are these?

Bob Eberhart Ìý14:04 Ìý
They seem a lot smarter than I am. I'm just gonna keep my mouth shut and hope they don't discover, you know,

Brad Ìý14:12 Ìý
I mean, well, how Why did you guys use you were one of the founding like there was you and a couple other people. How

Bob Eberhart Ìý14:18 Ìý
long ago it was founded in Stanford, professors, Woody Powell's backyard. With me, Woody and another well known person from Stanford, Steve barley, we were sitting in there his Woody's backyard drinking.

Brad Ìý14:35 Ìý
So that year, they were like, We need drinking, Bob.

That's how many great companies have started. But

Bob Eberhart Ìý14:41 Ìý
they just asked me the question. They said, Look, you're the only you know entrepreneur who's gone on afterward, right and started publishing. And their question was basically, you know, what do? What we teach, reflect. And I told them, I said, almost nothing that's being done, Max the actual experience of being an entrepreneur. Preneur. So because they were drunk, they decided to ask more questions about it instead of being mad about it. And it really developed. And it was that night, over over large we framed out on a piece of paper. You know, some of the core ideas that have become reversing the arrow as a research project that must be reflective

Brad Ìý15:23 Ìý
in your research though, Bob, that you have that experience right before you became an academic. Well, that's

Bob Eberhart Ìý15:29 Ìý
the thing. I mean, I published all three of my dissertation papers in top journals, and all of them, I think, worked, partially because of the help I had my from co authors, but also because they were all three questions I had during board meetings. Interesting, you know, so in a board meeting during running my company, you know, I had these questions that later when I studied academics. Yeah, that's interesting. The academics don't understand that either. And those became those papers.

Brad Ìý15:57 Ìý
So there's a lot of conferences out there, like, what made you I mean, I haven't seen Steve or woody at any of these conferences. Grant. I didn't go the first two. Steve

Bob Eberhart Ìý16:05 Ìý
going to the first two. And this conference actually generated or grew, I think, because we asked an important question, and I think a lot of people were getting concerned with this one particular point of view that was spreading through our universities that all of our students ought to become entrepreneurs. Oh yeah. Oh God. And didn't make any sense to me from being both an entrepreneur and a venture capitalist. But it just didn't make any sense if you thought carefully. I think that lots of other people were waiting. One of the early people who came to it, from UC Davis said to the whole group, once this whole conference is like scratching something on your back that you couldn't get to, you know? And so I think we're asking a question. People wanted to ask in question, because we are, after all, that's our job, where academics are supposed to be asking questions. Yeah, we're not supposed to be accepting what's given. And so it's, I think I would developed, yeah. I

Brad Ìý17:02 Ìý
mean, there's this, I won't say predominant, but a definite strand. In universities, they're looking at having strong entrepreneurship programs. Of the we want to make everyone an entrepreneur, and look at how many Ventures we launched.

Bob Eberhart Ìý17:18 Ìý
Well, that's the thing, right? Launch adventure. With it all you need to launch a venture is $25 and a bad idea. That's not a difficult thing to do, you know, but maybe it's 800 in California. Because I said, Yeah, but that was actually the concern is that we were looking at starts, not outcomes, right, which I always worried about so and we were always sampling interdependent value variable. We were always looking at successful companies. Sure, how did they become successful? But when you have 900 companies that didn't succeed, which will teach us probably more. So I think it became interesting not to say, entrepreneurships wrong. That's no no no wrong with it. It's to say, let's look more carefully at it. Well, it's

Brad Ìý18:02 Ìý
not panacea, like everyone doesn't need to be an entrepreneur, and entrepreneurship doesn't need

Bob Eberhart Ìý18:06 Ìý
to solve every problem, right? Well, it becomes a problem because, one, it provides an easy excuse to people that can't find jobs for their students. Yeah, start a company, and I've done my job. You started a company. And there's the other problem is that it's a private solution to other problems. And we've we've argued this many times that we all are worried about climate change, but I don't know that entrepreneurship is an answer to that. I more think social political changes, which are much larger and much different are the solution, and either event we should be examining this or a combination

Brad Ìý18:45 Ìý
of both, right, right? So you and I come from the same type of background. I'm an entrepreneur, also venture capitalist, and I look at entrepreneurship differently, though. I don't look at entrepreneurship as just starting companies. I look at it as a way to solve problems. And I think that, and I don't know if our listeners think this, but I do know that many of the people that I work with think specifically, it's all about starting companies, and that's really the furthest thing from what we're

trying even worse, it's all about raising money,

Bob Eberhart Ìý19:12 Ìý
oh God, well, it's all about finding resources, yeah, which is not what it's about, though,

Brad Ìý19:16 Ìý
no. But many, many, many, many, many of our

students, and many of very bright, but it's what

Bob Eberhart Ìý19:23 Ìý
we teach. It's what center textbooks. I mean, that was one of the main things at that, at that drinking party, that

Brad Ìý19:31 Ìý
one drinking

Bob Eberhart Ìý19:33 Ìý
but that was one of the things. It's that, you know, I didn't think of when I was an entrepreneur, that my key thing was to find resources? No, that was something that was done occasionally, and something I didn't think much about. What I worried about was sales markets, the growth of those markets. Could I sell the products in those markets? Once I knew I solved those problems, resources were gonna find me. It's really they did. That's the easy part. That's. The hard part is the addressable market, the feasible market. And what we teach much in many places entrepreneurship classes is how to find resources, rather than the harder problem of, how do you find a unique and interesting address? How

Brad Ìý20:15 Ìý
many times have you been asked, Bob, I have this great idea. How

Bob Eberhart Ìý20:17 Ìý
do I get so many times every it's every day. I said, I know how to get money. If it's a great idea from the cash flow of selling, just go sell something. Sell that stuff, lots of money.

Why do you want somebody to give you money for something you can't sell?

Brad Ìý20:36 Ìý
So think about this, though. What about something that's, let's talk about quantum, right? Very hot, or AI very hot. I actually know quantum companies that couldn't find a lane in quantum, so they're now AI companies. Well, sure, right? And it's all about raising the money. Yeah, it's really just to stay alive more than anything else.

Bob Eberhart Ìý20:56 Ìý
Yeah, I don't really understand the it's to me, it always had been that venture capital is a dangerous money to touch. Yeah. It meant you were selling a big chunk of your company. It meant in control of your company. All those things. If I have a really good idea, I don't know that that's the thing I want to do. A lot of people used to say, because I did in Japan. Well, Japanese companies don't have a lot of venture capital, yeah, but they do have 20 year loans at 1% which one do you want? Yeah,

Brad Ìý21:26 Ìý
I'll take the loan any day, and that's incredible.

Bob Eberhart Ìý21:29 Ìý
I take a 20% 1%

Brad Ìý21:31 Ìý
tearing apart the Chautauqua,

Bob Eberhart Ìý21:35 Ìý
right? It's easy to think about strategy. It's not so easy to think about market.

Brad Ìý21:39 Ìý
Yes. All right, so these are many of the problems. That seems, as our illustrious panel here agrees upon, yes, we do. Now the conference, though, like the conference reversing the arrow. Okay, what the heck, yeah, that's

Bob Eberhart Ìý21:51 Ìý
the that's a meaning we worked on that actually pretty hard, reversing the arrow. I get like three in the morning after

Brad Ìý21:58 Ìý
drinking the marketing director, the headache. Well, I'm just asking you, because I mean anybody listening,

Bob Eberhart Ìý22:05 Ìý
it just means precisely that we have studied for two or three decades how the world affects entrepreneurship. Okay, you know, how do we shape it? How do we create a national environment? Yeah, all that stuff this conference just simply reverses that arrow. Okay, we take that arrows as How does entrepreneurship now taken as a phenomenon? How does it affect society? The way I look at it is this way we had a puppy, yeah, and we studied this puppy, and we said, What food does it need? How do I create it, you know, how do I train it to to poop on the lawn, you know? Where should, you know, the neighbor's line, you know, stuff like that, yeah. How do I teach it to the great distillation of three decades of research, we finally got this dog, but then we got this dog that's up and it's tracking mud now, you know, and it's leaving its crap around, you know. And why say we did a very good training Yes, study. Now how the dog is affecting us. Yeah, study for a long time how we affect the dog, and it grew up. It's big. It's mature. Now. How is it changing our world? Yeah, and so that's rehearsing here. I'm

Brad Ìý23:11 Ìý
still focused on pooping in your neighbors. It's

interesting because, like, I think so I've been coming to the conference for, I guess, since the fifth year coming. You've been coming since the fifth year. So, so I've been the previous so What number is this? Number 577? Okay, wow, time flies. Yeah, when you're drinking canned wine, ain't no laws when you're drinking canned wine. So it seemed like a lot of the papers, at least, when I started coming to the conference, where, like, entrepreneurship pretty bad, and it does these bad things. And even if you go back and listen to our previous podcast with Bob, we were talking about the effects of the gig economy and sort of this bait and switch that, I think, is, you know, at the time, maybe not as obvious as now, but that like this, you're being sold the idea as an Uber driver. You're an entrepreneur. You're not a worker for a giant corporation that just doesn't get any benefits anymore or any security.

Working around the labor laws? No,

I'd say everyone's an entrepreneur. So the work around labor laws and all of a sudden you don't have rights as a worker. One of the papers I really vividly remember was how, how amazingly, bots will come in and pump up conversation about Elon Musk, formerly Twitter now, whenever, whenever there's a critique, yeah, whenever the critique of us. It's not that they go and say great things about musk, they just say things so yeah, just keep his name out there. Bad things disappear, right? And yeah,

Bob Eberhart Ìý24:41 Ìý
we can't know that. Yeah, it shouldn't. We shouldn't think about it has a negative valence. Yeah, we shouldn't think entrepreneurship itself. We can think and probably the reason was early on that the over exuberance, yes, over reliance on it has effects that we have to consider before we decide. We want to

Brad Ìý25:00 Ìý
do. It's a really interesting balance, because the last time we podcasted from a conference, we were at the social entrepreneurship Research Conference, which is a very good conference and very thoughtful. But there is sort of a bit of a flavor of that's exactly entrepreneurship is always everything right? And it can do some good things. I probably can. I'm comfortable with it. Actually, I

Bob Eberhart Ìý25:22 Ìý
think one of the West arguments you ever made, Jeff was that it can expire, yes, and yet you get kind of a chain reaction. And I think that's possible. Love to see it shown empirically, Jeff, but yeah, we'll get there. I'm kind of busy, right? But I think that's the thing, when we that the whole idea of social entrepreneurship is taking an idea of entrepreneur, is an entrepreneur list idea in and of itself. So the fact that it's now, but that's, I mean, I just have a paper that I'm presenting, a GIC that actually asks the question, do new firms? Are their objectives to generate profits and growth for their internal shareholders, okay? Or is the purpose of it to create employment and social goods for the community that they're embedded in? Okay?

Brad Ìý26:14 Ìý
So this is a theoretical paper, empirical paper, okay, what do you study? Well, we're phenomenal. Well,

Bob Eberhart Ìý26:20 Ìý
what we're studying is whether companies with they have deep connections to their community. Okay, we define that five ways. We define it as whether they have a local supplier, local customer, use, a local bank, where the CEO grew up in and lives in the community. There's a real connection, stuff like that, so real. And turns out that the more connections they have, the more likely they are to employ more people, even though they were found at the same time with the same capital in the same industry. Oh, find that there. And what we're arguing is that their objectives when I grew up just to go a little to the side, here we go. I grew up in the upper Midwest,

Brad Ìý27:05 Ìý
entrepreneurs.

Bob Eberhart Ìý27:07 Ìý
The pill boards about companies and companies locating in a town were always about the number of jobs. Yeah, sure. Well, I mean, 5000 jobs are coming. You know, this is what they talk about, right? And so what's interesting when we try to make the point in this paper, and I think it's very true, is that, you know, if, well, like I say in the paper, it's difficult to lay off the coach of your soccer team,

Jeff York Ìý27:33 Ìý
yes,

Bob Eberhart Ìý27:34 Ìý
every kid's soccer team. Oh

Brad Ìý27:35 Ìý
yeah, you

Bob Eberhart Ìý27:37 Ìý
know, they're part of your community, the and what would the key insight is that, as you get connected with the community, the company becomes sees its employees as the outputs of the firm, rather than economic inputs. They're not resources, they're not resources to be used. They're the purpose of it. I mean, you're there like the reason there's a reason you're there, and that is a social effect of entrepreneurship that we can think about. And I think we don't pay much to introduce, you know, and so, you know, and that's why I really want to emphasize that it's not that anything is bad here is that there are some bad balances that haven't been looked at that needed to be looked Yes, but

Brad Ìý28:17 Ìý
don't you need to get to a certain scale, though, for that, right? So I mean, when early stages, a couple people trying to find customers and traction, that's,

Bob Eberhart Ìý28:28 Ìý
well, you see the tension play on, both in scale. And I mean, a good example, as I was an advisor to the Green Bay Packers, and they had a problem. They had to take money from their profitable team and produce companies so that they could innovate and increase the employment in Green Bay Area, residents on the team, right the residents on the team, so they have to pull the money back. And so me and a couple people went there were employed to set up a thing where we create local, relevant projects that engage the five largest employers there so that they would hire more people. And we think it had some progress, and some finance people took over, and it went, there we go. Yeah, sideways. But the thing is that you can think of a company either to make a few people wealthy, right, or think of a company as providing social goods. One of the key ones is employment. But don't

Brad Ìý29:23 Ìý
they? Don't they, kind of, I mean, according to, like, you know, the stakeholder theory approach, you would say, well, this go hand in hand. Like, if you look at a company that's, you know, not creating value for its community, that is exceeding the social liabilities which are upon it is a company that's polluting, that's destroying the environment that is continuously doing these things in the short term, that may be something profitable, but if we look at long term value creation, the company eventually will not be able

Bob Eberhart Ìý29:49 Ìý
to do well, I think it is. But I think we looking at it in Jeff and particularly in that example, we're looking at it as companies of 40 years ago, pollution and making the water. Dirty and this, yeah, you're looking at now where companies become large, yes, and pollute ideas. They control social media, yeah, they send out weird ideas. And those ideas are about how we should pay the CEO several billions of dollars while laying off others, yeah, and those ideas become accepted by others because social media broadcast that. So great

Brad Ìý30:26 Ìý
how the internet's

Bob Eberhart Ìý30:28 Ìý
fixed every Yeah, so it's a numbing effect, right? It is. It suggests, because you hear enough, and I think you guys both said it, when you hear it enough, it starts becoming true, right? Yeah, oh, yeah. You just think

Brad Ìý30:45 Ìý
is not a lie. If you believe, yeah, that's there is

Bob Eberhart Ìý30:50 Ìý
good research. There is good research in the micro OB Space that if you get someone to hear a lie twice, even though they know it's a lie, they start giving you credibility, yeah,

Brad Ìý31:02 Ìý
because they've heard it right.

Bob Eberhart Ìý31:06 Ìý
So that's why to worry about the dangers of the companies. Now we're give companies that have very small employment. Compared to when I work for General Motors, it had 760,000 people. Yeah, now it's getting a lot smaller.

Brad Ìý31:20 Ìý
So what's the actual that's terrifying, actually? Well, no,

I mean, but you won't make me, I'll make it a little more terrifying for you. Imagine that companies need to employ about an eighth of the people they do now, right? If and are THREE TIMES as effective in their communication, sure? Which is, I think what's happened the next five years? That's right? Or maybe even the next two years, maybe this year, we don't know. I think that's exactly, but it's already happening. I mean, it's so, so, so where's the insight here? Like, I mean, we, you know, should we all go, like, try to start little, small community

Bob Eberhart Ìý31:50 Ìý
businesses? I think, I think the insight here is actually policy. Yeah, well, that's

Brad Ìý31:55 Ìý
fine. I mean, I really

Bob Eberhart Ìý31:56 Ìý
talk about policy. Well, we don't much in the stuff, and we should, for example, in the you may remember, you're old enough and I am to watch Mary Poppins. Oh yeah. Oh yeah, okay, there were those three old bankers you're trying to get, trying to give Michael to give them any topics, yeah, you know. And they would save it in the bank. And they went over and over about how, if he gives them the tumbence, they will care for it carefully. Yeah, there's a song about there's an old song about it. You can't imagine that scenario in the modern world now. He says, oh gosh, give me your templates and you'll never see it again. Yeah, it's like here,

Brad Ìý32:35 Ìý
so here in Boulder, we have, like, elevations Credit Union. I mean, like,

Bob Eberhart Ìý32:40 Ìý
there's always there are people that choose to bank with, like, there's always fun. But I think what we did, it's not like giving your money to chase Well, that's exactly right. But what we did was we financialized the economy. We made it so that financial activities became elevated and important. I think the most pernicious thing is, when we made private equity banks corporations, because all of a sudden, they could shift their liabilities to their shareholders, and I think we have a simple policy, and by the way, and that resulted in people going into that industry that do well in that I think we simply changed that Law back. Is that easy? If all of a sudden the pivot equity in the banker and the investment bankers were personally liable for the mistakes they made, then prudentialism and care would go back in, and then the people they would avoid,

Brad Ìý33:36 Ìý
the two big so I'm not

Bob Eberhart Ìý33:38 Ìý
saying this is all okay.

Brad Ìý33:42 Ìý
Policy can work, yeah, that's interesting. And you could, it seems, shall we say, unlikely at a federal level, not quickly, you know, short of, no,

we need a couple of disasters to happen first. Well, we're coming, but

Bob Eberhart Ìý33:55 Ìý
we've had those, and the

Brad Ìý33:57 Ìý
reaction of the American people has been we should put a business manager?

Bob Eberhart Ìý34:04 Ìý
Well, that's what we're writing about.

Brad Ìý34:11 Ìý
Understand why it happened. Because people make very digestible movies like The Long Short and make it all very clear what happened, so anybody who pays any attention because Yeah. And they'll say, who should we put in charge now, right?

Bob Eberhart Ìý34:24 Ìý
Well, Jeff, the question is, and I think you're putting it up exactly right, and I don't know the answer to this, but we do pose the question, you know, last time we were this unequal, yes, the last time we had this type of stuff going on where plutocrats, you know, were out of control, was around the turn of the 19th, 20th Century. Yeah, the populace did rise up and did call for reforms, which we all know the history of. Now we're having it's happening again. But the populace is calling for different Yes, calling for reforms to energize. Yes, mechanisms. That's what's different. I don't know why that's happening. I have some ideas. I

Brad Ìý35:05 Ìý
think it's just clever marketing. Actually, maybe that's it. I think it's just being willing to speak to a disenfranchised group, and

Bob Eberhart Ìý35:11 Ìý
then we should market and that's why this podcast

Brad Ìý35:17 Ìý
is mission statement. All 20 of the people that hear this. That's up from five. Yeah, we're

changing the world, John,Ìý

Jeff York Ìý35:26 Ìý
changing the world.Ìý

Bob Eberhart Ìý35:26 Ìý
My wife's gonna listen. It's 21 and your

Brad Ìý35:30 Ìý
wife can write to us at CD podcast.edu, make reservations with JDS, Joy rides, directions to liquid, mechanics, all the things you need now reply, and we'll reply to you, all right, so Bob, so we got the actual insights. That's one that's really nice policy. Anything else we take away from this, like, I mean, so from a policymaker perspective, I mean, can you change things like a state or localized level, where you would enable? So a lot of the research, I think, like, you know, just my two cents on this. I think a lot of this research, a lot of these things can be remedied by looking at the interaction between policy, entrepreneurial results, not just entry, but like persistence and actual sales and things like that. I myself am very guilty of looking at entry, because it's easy to measure sure get you, but at the very least you can look at, well, very least you can look at entry combined with, say, social norms, other institutional forces. You can look at policy. I mean, that's pretty easy

Bob Eberhart Ìý36:26 Ìý
to measure, to need to look at that way. There's several things we need to examine, I think carefully. I think you're Precisely right. Why do people choose to enter? What are the motivations for entering? Yes, what will then the engine that's really different space, right? Like environmental space, it

Brad Ìý36:41 Ìý
is very different. But let me

Bob Eberhart Ìý36:43 Ìý
give you a cool example for better for work, to my view, Q example. Anyway, I when I moved to California, yes, in 1990

Jeff York Ìý36:51 Ìý
Which already discounts everything you've saved.

Bob Eberhart Ìý36:58 Ìý
It was literally true that you could print your CV, your resume, walk across the street, show it to somebody, and get a job. It was just so easy to get jobs in Silicon Valley in the 90s, it was incredible. And nowadays it's very difficult to find jobs. Yes, here's the point. In the 90s, people would start companies with the certain knowledge that it would blow up in two years, maybe like most likely, and they can go back to their old jobs. So blow up in a bad right now, right? Blow up in a bad way. Now. They have to be actually scared their jobs will not be back to them and become entrepreneurs, because they don't have any other choice. Oh, my God, and that's changed them. Different motivation will change. The strategies will change the reactions to the outcomes. We have to create labor markets that are so rich and robust that people can take that chance and know that they can get a job again. They won't starve or be condemned to a series of failed entrepreneurial events, you know, for the rest of their lives. And I think if we thought carefully about that, we would come up with some policies. Yeah, they can always go

Brad Ìý38:10 Ìý
to a university or something, but universities,

Bob Eberhart Ìý38:13 Ìý
universities are pushing them into entrepreneurship company, Okay, we're done

Brad Ìý38:20 Ìý
for a university to attend. For your further information, the University of Colorado in Boulder is a lovely location,

Bob Eberhart Ìý38:26 Ìý
unless you really like nice weather, in which case, University of San Diego,

Brad Ìý38:34 Ìý
you actually like weather, though we have some, as evidenced by the attendees of rehearsal today.

Bob Eberhart Ìý38:42 Ìý
Our feature is that we don't have much weather.

Brad Ìý38:46 Ìý
Having just come back from Hawaii, there's an argument for no weather, yeah, for sure, there is all right. Well, I guess we should wrap this up. Let you get back to hosting the conference. Bob, this

Bob Eberhart Ìý38:56 Ìý
has been wonderful. Jeff. Thank you very much, Jeff. This is your idea to come here, and I'm glad I listened to you the only time.

Brad Ìý39:07 Ìý
Really not alone in that.

This is really wonderful. Our guest was Professor Robert Everhart, Professor of Management, Faculty Director at the ollers Center for International Business. Did I get wrong this time? You got it right? Man, I can't believe that's blue. I drank this can of wine and still got right good. Now we've seen where this can will take. Wanna see if you can do canals? Well, yes, canal school business. There you go. You set me up. Very nice for that at the University of San Diego, where there is no weather except for nice weather. So coming to you live from Chautauqua University conference. I am Jeff York, director the dimming Center for Entrepreneurship at the Leeds School of Business. I

am Brad Warner and Bob. It was a pleasure. Yeah,

Bob Eberhart Ìý39:47 Ìý
always great to be here. Yeah, thanks,

Brad Ìý39:48 Ìý
Jeff and cheers guys, let's find some more Ken wine. Cheers. Ken wine,

Dona L Ìý39:55 Ìý
we hope you enjoyed this episode of creative distillation. We. Recorded on location at the reversing the arrow conference held at Boulder Chautauqua Park in June of 2024 learn more about Bob everharts work at R everheart.org we'd love to hear your feedback and ideas. Email us at cdpodcast@colorado.edu and please be sure to Subscribe to Creative distillation wherever you get your podcasts. The creative distillation podcast is made possible by the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Colorado, Boulder's Leeds School of Business. For more information, please visit deming.colorado.edu, that's D, E, M, I, N, G, and click the creative distillation link. Creative distillation is produced by Joel Davis at analog digital arts, our theme music is whiskey before breakfast, performed by your humble host, Brad and Jeff. Thanks for listening. We'll see you back here next week for the next round of creative distillation. You.

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