The Wall Street Journal: Why Immigrants Make Great Entrepreneurs

I’ve been studying immigrants for over a decade, trying to figure out what makes so many of them go into business for themselves in the West—at higher rates than natives do—and succeed, too. The Kauffman Foundation’s annual Index of Startup Activity shows that immigrants were almost twice as likely as native-born to start new businesses in the U.S. in 2016. Almost 30% of all new entrepreneurs were immigrants, Kauffman says. A reportfrom the Partnership for a New American Economy found that in 2016, 40.2% of Fortune 500 firms had “at least one founder who either immigrated to the United States or was the child of immigrants.”

I’m not surprised. What I’ve found is that immigrants not only have the qualities that help any entrepreneurs succeed—including aggressiveness and creative thinking—but they get a big boost because many of the skills they picked up coping with a new world are transferable to the entrepreneurial world.