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How Much Employees Can Learn Entrepreneur-like Tasks Influences Entrepreneurship Rate
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Yoko ASUYAMA
Institute of Developing Economies, JETRO
August 2026
Most entrepreneurs start their businesses with experience as employees. In a recent study (Asuyama 2026), I found that more opportunities for employees to learn “entrepreneur-like tasks” increase the entrepreneurship rate. “Entrepreneur-like tasks” are identified as those involving more diverse, autonomous, financial and sales-related, and managerial activities, with fewer compiling tasks. Notably, greater learning opportunities foster innovative or large-employment entrepreneurs. These results highlight the importance of recognizing that the size of employees’ learning opportunities for entrepreneurial tasks significantly influences a country’s entrepreneurship rate when designing entrepreneurship policies.
Most Entrepreneurs Were Previously Employees
Entrepreneurship fuels economic growth, innovation, and new job creation (Parker 2018). Then, how do entrepreneurs emerge? Often, when we think of “entrepreneurs,” we think of those involved in technology, such as Mark E. Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, and the founders of Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who started their businesses as university students. However, many entrepreneurs, whether in tech or other fields, often begin their businesses based on their experience working as employees (Bhidé 2000; Burton et al. 2002; Kantis et al. 2002; Sørensen and Fassiotto 2011). For example, Jeff Bezos gained experience working for various companies before founding Amazon. Similarly, the Generative AI company Anthropic was established by seven former OpenAI employees.1
As employees constitute approximately 90% of total employment in high-income countries in 2025, the extent to which they can acquire entrepreneurial skills on the job likely has a significant impact on both the entrepreneurship rate and the performance of entrepreneurial businesses.2 I empirically confirm this prediction in a recent study (Asuyama 2026).
Which Skills Are Necessary for Entrepreneurs?
To determine this, I focus on the characteristics of tasks that entrepreneurs typically perform, drawing on information from 47 tasks across 31 countries.3 Entrepreneurs are defined as self-employed individuals who employ at least one person. The information on the performance of 47 tasks, mostly measured by task frequency, is summarized into five task categories and one score measuring task diversity (Figure 1). It indicates that entrepreneurs engage in a wider range of tasks compared with employees, including more autonomous, financial and sales-related, and managerial tasks, and fewer compiling tasks such as reading documents, compiling information, and writing reports.
Figure 1. Comparison of Average Task Performance Scores between Entrepreneurs and Employees
Notes: Each of the five task scores on the left is standardized with a mean of 5 and a standard deviation of 1., which is computed from the OECD’s PIAAC data
I consider that employees who perform entrepreneur-like tasks tend to have more opportunities to learn entrepreneurial skills on the job. Based on this assumption, I develop an index named “the employees’ opportunities to learn entrepreneurs’ tasks” (hereinafter, the “Learning Opportunity Index”) that summarizes the similarity of employees’ task sets to those of entrepreneurs.4
Higher Learning Opportunity Index Results in Higher Entrepreneurship Rate
I then examine whether employees’ opportunities to gain more experience in entrepreneurial tasks increase the probability of becoming entrepreneurs. As expected, an analysis of 23 countries shows that workers with a high Learning Opportunity Index—that is, those who work in environments where employees can learn more entrepreneur-like tasks—are more likely to become entrepreneurs.5 Figure 2 depicts the average Learning Opportunity Index and entrepreneurship rate for each learning environment, defined by gender × five age groups × two educational levels, in Japan. It demonstrates that this positive relationship holds true not only across the 23 countries but also within individual countries such as Japan.
Figure 2. Learning Opportunity Index and Entrepreneurship Rate: The Case of Japan
Notes: Each data point represents the average index for employees’ opportunities to learn entrepreneurs’ tasks (x-axis) and average entrepreneurship rate (y-axis) in the corresponding learning environment, which is defined by country (Japan in this Figure) × gender (male or female) × age group (16–24, 25–34, 35–44, 45–54, or 55–65) × education group (below tertiary, or tertiary and higher). Blue markers indicate male, whereas white markers indicate female. Circle markers indicate below tertiary education, whereas triangle markers indicate tertiary and higher education. The maker labels indicate age groups.
Various robustness checks confirm that employees’ learning opportunities for entrepreneurs’ tasks boost the entrepreneurship rate.6 Estimates indicate that the entrepreneurship rate increases by 3–11 percentage points when the Learning Opportunity Index shifts from the bottom 10th percentile to the top 10th percentile environment. This increase is substantial and matches or exceeds the gender gap in entrepreneurship rates, which is 2–6 percentage points (this is observed even after controlling for various individual attributes).7
Although research shows that diversified experience promotes entrepreneurial entry (Lazear 2005; Krieger et al. 2018), my findings indicate that both diversified experience and the similarity of the diversified task content to those of entrepreneurial work are important. Furthermore, the pathway linking a high Learning Opportunity Index to higher entrepreneurship rates partly reflects self-perceived skill improvement, increased acquaintance with entrepreneurs, and greater awareness of entrepreneurial opportunities.
Environments with a higher Learning Opportunity Index exhibit a greater emergence of highly innovative or large-employment entrepreneurs, both of whom are critical for the economy’s sustained growth. However, because lower-performing entrepreneurs, measured by innovativeness and employment creation, also emerge more frequently in such environments, the net effect of the Learning Opportunity Index is statistically zero on average. Due to data limitations, its impact on the productivity or profitability of entrepreneurial businesses cannot be analyzed.
Changing Employees’ Task Sets May Be Challenging
Governments worldwide prioritize innovative firms with high potential for creating jobs. Expanding opportunities for employees to learn entrepreneurial tasks offers a promising policy lever along with established policies such as improving access to finance, reforming firm entry and exit regulations, and improving entrepreneurship education.
However, changing employees’ task sets poses a significant challenge for policymakers. First, firms generally have little incentive to provide their employees with opportunities to learn entrepreneurial tasks. Such opportunities increase the risk that employees will leave to pursue entrepreneurial ventures. Firms are likely to offer such opportunities only when they expect clear benefits, such as developing intrapreneurial ventures or entrepreneurial businesses that complement the firm’s existing operations. Second, altering employees’ tasks may require broad organizational reforms, including changes to companies’ promotion systems, decision-making structures, and their culture and work styles. Although data limitations prevent a comprehensive analysis of the factors that expand employees’ learning opportunities for entrepreneurs’ tasks, my study indicates that employees in managerial positions tend to have greater learning opportunities for entrepreneurs’ tasks. However, in countries with aging populations, delayed promotion to managerial positions may offer young people with entrepreneurial aspirations limited opportunities to learn entrepreneurial skills as employees.8 Moreover, in countries characterized by collective decision-making systems or work styles and cultures that emphasize cooperation and coordination, employees may have few opportunities to experience entrepreneur-like autonomous work styles.
In summary, expanding employees’ opportunities to learn entrepreneurial tasks through policy is inherently difficult. However, it is still important to recognize that the size of such opportunities, which are partly influenced by a country’s demographics, labor market, and work organization and culture, significantly affects a country’s entrepreneurship rate and should be considered when formulating entrepreneurship policies.
Author’s Note
This column is based on Asuyama, Yoko. 2026. “Learning Entrepreneurship as an Employee.” Journal of Human Capital, 20 (2): 313–346. https://doi.org/10.1086/739418
Notes
- Work history information on each entrepreneur in this paragraph is based on Wikipedia.
- The share of employees is calculated using the World Bank’s World Development Indicators, assuming that all workers other than the self-employed are employees. The share of employees decreases as the country’s income level decreases: 62% in upper-middle-income countries, 32% in lower-middle-income countries, and 23% in low-income countries. However, it is highly likely that working experience as an employee is also important for creating innovative businesses in developing countries. A study of “dynamic entrepreneurs” with relatively young and large-employment firms in Latin America and East Asia show that many entrepreneurs had experience working as employees before starting their businesses (Kantis et al. 2002).
- I use the Public Use Files of the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) conducted by OECD in 2011-2012 (1st round) and 2014-2015 (2nd round) across 31 countries, which are mostly OECD members.
- At the employee-level, this index is estimated as the predicted probability that (s)he is an entrepreneur, judging only from his/her tasks (five task scores and a task diversity score), after regressing entrepreneur indicator on task scores and various worker attributes.
- For this analysis, I first compute worker’s learning environment-level Learning Opportunity Index, which is computed as the environment-level average score of employee-level index. A worker’s learning environment is defined by his/her country × gender × age group (5 groups) × education group (2 groups). Although this definition might be too broad to define a worker’s learning environment, using this definition helps minimize the risk of self-selection, where people who originally aspire to become entrepreneurs choose jobs with greater learning opportunities. This is because workers generally cannot choose such a broadly defined environment. I next link the environment-level Index computed from PIAAC data to worker-level data from 23 countries in the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) entrepreneurship survey from 2012 to 2017. The 23 countries are mostly OECD members. There are 444 learning environments in the analytical sample.
- To demonstrate that the positive relationship between the Learning Opportunity Index and entrepreneurship rate is causal rather than merely correlational, I perform various robustness checks, including: i) controlling for various factors that may influence entrepreneurship rates; ii) performing instrumental variable estimation; iii) performing bound estimation robust to omitted variable bias; and iv) conducting a similar analysis at the aggregated learning-environment level rather than at the worker level.
- The entrepreneurship rate here refers to the percentage of owner-managers of a new firm with less than 5 years of operation (including “nascent entrepreneurs” being involved in setting up a business) out of the total workers excluding entrepreneurs operating for more than 5 years.
- Assuming this mechanism, Liang et al. (2018) show that country’s higher population aging leads to lower entrepreneurship rate.
References
Asuyama, Yoko. 2026. “Learning Entrepreneurship as an Employee.” Journal of Human Capital
20 (2): 313–346.
Bhidé, Amar V. 2000. The Origin and Evolution of New Businesses.
Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.
Burton, M. Diane, Jesper B. Sørensen, and Christine M. Beckman. 2002. “Coming from Good Stock: Career Histories and New Venture Formation.” In Social Structure and Organizations Revisited
, (Research in the Sociology of Organizations, vol. 19), edited by M. Lounsbury and M. J. Ventresca, 229–262. Bingley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
Lazear, Edward P. 2005. “Entrepreneurship.” Journal of Labor Economics
23 (4): 649–680.
Liang, James, Hui Wang, and Edward P. Lazear. 2018. “Demographics and Entrepreneurship.” Journal of Political Economy
126 (S1): S140–S196.
Kantis, Hugo, Masahiko Ishida, and Masahiko Komori. 2002. Entrepreneurship in Emerging Economies: The Creation and Development of New Firms in Latin America and East Asia
. Washington, DC: Inter-American Development Bank.
Krieger, Alexander, Jörn Block, and Michael Stuetzer. 2018. “Skill Variety in Entrepreneurship: A Literature Review and Research Directions.” International Review of Entrepreneurship
16 (1): 29–62.
Parker, Simon C. 2018. The Economics of Entrepreneurship
. 2nd ed. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Sørensen, Jesper B., and Magali A. Fassiotto. 2011. “Organizations as Fonts of Entrepreneurship.” Organization Science
22 (5): 1322–1331.
* The views expressed in the columns are those of the author(s) and do not represent the views of IDE or the institutions to which the authors are attached.
* Thumbnail photo: Business meeting with employees and a humanoid robot. (sorbetto / DigitalVision Vectors /
This column is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0).
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed
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