It’s easy to understand the importance of innovators and entrepreneurs to the economy, but it’s much harder to figure out the best ways to encourage more entrepreneurship. In an article for TechCrunch, Vivek Wadhwa explores Start-Up Chile, a program that he calls “Chile’s Grand Innovation Experiment.” Most initiatives to create the next Silicon Valley have failed, Wadhwa argues, because they use a top-down approach that fatally leaves out the most important ingredient — the entrepreneurs themselves. Start-up Chile is therefore unique because, rather than building office parks and partnering with VC’s and universities, it focuses on attracting innovators and entrepreneurs from all over the world to Chile, where they will start their own businesses.

Learn more about how Start-up Chile plans to achieve this goal and watch a video about its first crop of participants here.

An interesting paper published this summer by Vivek Wadhwa et al.: “Anatomy of an Entrepreneur: Family Background and Motivation.”

The paper’s abstract:

“Entrepreneurs are among the most celebrated people in our culture. Celebrity entrepreneurs such as Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, often grace the covers of prominent publications. These company founders and innovators fuel economic growth and give the nation its competitive edge.

“However, very little is known today about the backgrounds, life histories, motivations and beliefs of these entrepreneurs. So myths and stereotypes prevail. The commonly held belief is that entrepreneurs are young, lightly-educated, childless unmarried workaholics. They are perceived to come from rich families and graduate from elite colleges.

“But is this true?

“This research answers some of these questions. This is based on a survey of 549 company founders in 12 high-growth industries.

“It finds that most founders came from middle-class or upper-lower-class backgrounds, are well-educated and married with children. The strongest motivation for starting a company was to ‘build wealth.’ Other popular motivators included capitalizing on a business idea; the appeal of a startup culture; a desire to own a company; and a lack of interest in working for someone else.”

Here’s the link to the paper at the Social Science Research Network.