The Impact of Entrepreneurship Programs on Minorities

Over the past decade, significant amounts of public and private resources have been directed toward entrepreneurship training and incubation programs. Despite this trend, there is little consensus on whether entrepreneurs are “born” or whether entrepreneurial abilities can be taught. Moreover, we have little understanding of whether and how the effects of these programs differ across participants, which poses challenges for efficient allocation of resources. In this paper, we explore whether certain minority groups, specifically females and non-Caucasians, may be differentially affected by entrepreneurship programs by analyzing The Next 36, an entrepreneurship training and incubation program for undergraduate students in North America. We do this by comparing subsequent entrepreneurial activity between applicants who are accepted into the program with applicants who are program finalists but not accepted. We measure subsequent entrepreneurial activity by whether finalists work in the startup sector in the period just following the program, and whether they continue to work in the startup sector in the longer run.