Saturday, 10 December 2016

The Mythology of Entrepreneurship

The mythology of entrepreneurship is to focus on those that have created and sold a technology company.  The myth is based around the innovative and competitive around technological work that rewards the people that work hard and are smart with a large amount of wealth.  The employees are generally young and deeply immersed in social technologies. Youtube and MySpace allowed for user generated content. Ultimately, allowing the promotion of the representations that people make of themselves. There is rarely boundaries about with what is considered work life and what is personal, the young people are deeply involved and embedded into work life.  Web 2.0 employees function as both users and designers, that draw from how  larger tech  firms function in Silicon Valley, that are use the ideology of revolutionary change as the foundation.
"These values (wealth, visibility, access, entrepreneurship) ultimately shape their general interpersonal interactions and self-presentation, including how they seek status, and leave traces in the social media applications themselves.” Marwick
Many work communities around the world admire and attempt to recreate the work culture, buying into the myth of entrepreneurship.  A recent post on New York Times reveals that Chinese entrepreneurs are admiring Silicon Valley’s start up culture. Groups from China’s business world take tourist vacations to visit and absorb the work environment of Silicon Valley.  The Chinese corporate tourists have bought into the myth of becoming extremely wealthy overnight. Management styles are very culturally different between China and America.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/05/technology/daily-report-china-dreams-of-silicon-valley.html

What the Chinese tourists and other companies do not realize is that the work culture is not the dream world it appears to be. Alice Marwick highlights two components of the Silicon Valley entrepreneurship environment. Firstly,  there is no difference between being off line or online within the entrepreneurship environment.  Secondly, Marwick draws our attention to the wealthy white male experience of technology. The entrepreneur community draws attention to the rich, young, white men creating a narrative of maleness entrepreneurialism, ultimately excluding women.  

2 comments:

  1. Overall, I enjoyed reading this post. You bring up some really interesting points resolving around the conceptions and misconceptions revolving around myth of entrepreneurship. I also really enjoyed how you used to example of the New York Times article that reveals that Chinese entrepreneurs are admiring Silicon Valley’s start up culture. My question to you is, do you think this will call to be the next frontier of start-up culture? Do you think technology specialists will make their way to enhance the technological dimensions over seas? Let me know what you think.

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  2. Interesting Post! It reminds me of the Silicon Valley film that we saw in class with those eight brilliant men striving to start their own transistor business. I think that Silicon Valley is recognized that by their entrepreneurship and innovation which is why entrepreneurs or young ambitious business students strive to work there. However, many people truly do not understand the true culture that Silicon Valley has because it has been tainted by Hollywood as this dream place to work at. Although for some people it may be, I think that there are a lot more elements that must be considered especially the issues of maleness entrepreneurialism like you mentioned and discrimination.

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