“Myth-busting Entrepreneurship,” notes four commonly held beliefs and attempts to set the record straight. 

• Challenging the notion that small business plays the most important role in growing the economy, Stangler notes that the age of the firm is a more important variable than the size of the firm.  “It’s new and young companies that create most jobs and innovations, not necessarily small companies,” he says.

• He cites multiple studies that refute the popular stereotype that most entrepreneurs are 23-year-olds starting tech companies in their local coffee shop or their bedroom.  “By and large,” he says, “the ‘peak age’ for starting a company is in the mid to late 30s, early 40s.”

• Stangler warns against efforts to recreate Silicon Valley in the hopes of creating a hotbed of high-tech startups. “Silicon Valley is a very unique place that’s never going to be replicated.  We all need to stop trying to be a Silicon fill-in-the-blank, not just in the U.S., but anywhere around the world,” he says.

• More recently, Stangler and the research team at Kauffman have been examining the role of business incubators to launch early-stage companies. “Most research shows that incubators are not effective at all for actually producing companies,” he says.

Read and see more great stuff on the Kauffman Foundation website.