Michael Wyrwich of the University of Groningen and Viktor Slavtchev, a researcher with the German government, studied TV signals in East Germany from the 1960s to 1989 and individual and local rates of entrepreneurship there after German reunification. They found that people in households with access to West German broadcasts were more likely than other East Germans to launch companies later in life. That was especially true of those who were children or at the start of their careers. The conclusion: The TV you watch when you’re young can make you more entrepreneurial.
A version of this article appeared in the July–August 2023 issue of Harvard Business Review.
