In South Korea, the saying goes that “to be an entrepreneur you have to kill two women – your mother and your future wife”. In South Korea, young male entrepreneurs would shame their mothers by not pursuing a professional career, such as doctor or lawyer, or working for a top chaebol – meaning conglomerate, such as Samsung and LG. By being an entrepreneur, a future wife would also suffer from shame, and the financial repercussions that come from this riskier lifestyle.
For policy scientists who study how and why culture is “sticky”, we ask ourselves what governments can do to effect a seismic shift in favour of entrepreneurial behaviour. In the Korean case, could policy help to make it okay to tell your mother that you are going to be an entrepreneur?
Since the 1990s, the Singaporean government has used the rubric of turning its highly-trained “engineers into entrepreneurs”. The aim has…
