] These changes in the entrepreneur profile represent an
] enormous return on our collective investment in the
] irrational exuberance of the late 90s. As a nation, we
] have probably spent something close to $500 billion on
] entrepreneur development over the past 10 years, if you
] consider the venture capital, corporate capital, and
] public capital that has been spent on high-tech startups
] during that period. We tend to focus on the flood of
] money that was wasted on goofy ideas and flawed business
] models, but we have not given full respect to the value
] that investment has created%u2014not just the eBays and
] and Googles of the world, but (more importantly) the
] experience pool and the knowledge base that has been
] created, and the propagation of best practices throughout
] our economy.

I've been saying this all along... there's a tremendous amount of gold to be mined from the boom-bust. Not just in intellectual capital, but experience and perspective. It will reverberate and echo for decades.