The proverbial teenage geek making millions designing apps in his bedroom is at the heart of our twenty-first-century vision of entrepreneurship, and seen by some as the key to much-needed economic renewal. TV’s Dragons Den millionaire Duncan Bannatyne declares: ‘We need to get entrepreneurialism in the psyche of kids and give them the confidence to produce multi-million pound businesses in this country.’ Meanwhile the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills has given the go-ahead for an apprenticeship for entrepreneurs, on top of endless other initiatives, from the Growth Vouchers programme to the Funding for Lending scheme.

There is particular excitement around internet and tech start-ups: trying to found the next Facebook has taken the place of the paper round as the default young person’s money-making scheme. Close to half (47 per cent) of those aged 18-30 want to start their own business. Indeed, the number of newly registered businesses rocketed from 484,224 in 2012 to an estimated 581,173 in 2014. But is there a danger of over-hyping these developments, distracting from more concrete macroeconomic solutions and encouraging the young to build castles in the air?

Inevitably, schools have been charged with ensuring kids see entrepreneurialism as a viable career option. So curricula should include courses in leadership, teamwork, time management, how to raise finance, cash flow and profits, how to pitch ideas, how to develop minimum viable prototypes, negotiate with lawyers, and create a business plan. But even if we buy into the idea that entrepreneurs are the future, do we know what one is? A self-employed window cleaner, a recently redundant executive newly rebranded as a consultant and a student setting up a website to sell second-hand clothes are all counted by the government as entrepreneurs. Sceptics suggest entrepreneurship may appeal to the young only because of a lack of ‘real’ jobs; so is the whole thing just a distraction from the failings of the traditional economy? Moreover, what constitutes success for an entrepreneur? As one commentator recently asked, ‘is successful entrepreneurship the number of new company registrations, the number of people employed, the valuation, or something else?’.

As many of the most successful entrepreneurs seemed to have been spurred on by doing badly at school, are educational silver bullets missing the point? And by selling the young the aspiration of being the next Mark Zuckerberg and glamorising the virtues of being one’s own boss, do we neglect the reality that most of us will work for others? Should the government pay more attention to facilitating the growth of big business rather than investing so many hopes (and so much money) into turning small-scale tech geniuses into the motor of future growth?