Re:Silicon Valley aside, why are Americans more willing to r...
by chaostheory on Friday August 31, 2007 @11:33AM
(#48741)
I forgot to mention this: Americans are either descendents of risk takers or risk takers themselves (if they are immigrants). I've forgotten the article/research but even in horrible times of famine, economic disaster, or war; for some reason very few people actually leave their country. I think less than 30%. I'm willing to bet that the US probably has taken in a huge majority of the people that were willing to take a risk in a place where they know little of (including the native language) for greater opportunity...
Re:Silicon Valley aside, why are Americans more willing to r...
by portLAN on Friday August 31, 2007 @04:55AM
(#48652)
> I think it also has a lot to do with the way Americans view failure (versus Europeans and a few Asian countries).
U.S. Americans don't view failure the same as the Iraq and the Asian countries. South Africa, such as.
Re:Silicon Valley aside, why are Americans more willing to r...
by ks on Friday August 31, 2007 @05:24PM
(#48975)
I'm going for the most obvious answer: USA is a single large market, over 5 times the population of UK. Most understand English and it is also geographically large, so there's lots of room for local competition.
You have a much greater chance of success. 20% of the US market equals 100% of the UK market... Even if you don't "win", you have a decent chance of at least breaking even.
In America while failure is not a good thing, it is also not a permanent thing that can scar you forever as a pariah in both society and the business community. You can try again and again... I could be wrong, but I don't think this is the case for Europe or countries like Japan; it's much harder to try something entrepreneurial more than once if you failed the 1st time...
Case in point, I think it took Sam Walton over ten tries before he got it right with Walmart. (Hell look at Edison too)
(I think as Americans we're just crazier than the Europeans.)