Abstract
Right in front of you: A review of Yes! France is a Paradise for Entrepreneurs: Moving Beyond Stereotypes on Economic Opportunities by Fabrice Cavarretta, London, UK: Amazon, 2024, 240 pages, ISBN: 979 8338744222 soft cover £14.90 (translation from the French, Oui! La France est un Paradis pour Entrepreneurs: Pour en Finir avec le ‘French Bashing’, Paris, France: Plon, 2016, 288 pages).
‘Every [hu]man has two countries, his own and France’, Thomas Jefferson supposedly said. Fascination with France might give a reason to pick up France is a Paradise, but there are further significant educational, scholarly and practical reasons to read it. The book starts by pedagogically demonstrating the basics of entrepreneurship theory, such as hygiene and opportunity factors. The core of France is a Paradise, and the biggest surprise it brings, is a careful analysis of the country’s start-up ecosystem. Fabrice Cavarretta demonstrates how French attributes traditionally associated with backwardness, such as a strong state and an attachment to heritage, can enable and even lead to systemic opportunity creation. These are unusual arguments and are made very convincingly. But the book is not only advocating for France but also acknowledging real obstacles to entrepreneurship in France such as unhelpful public servants and prohibiting labour costs.
On the theoretical side, France is a Paradise transcends standard notions of opportunity creation and discovery such as the necessity of great leaders and of magical inspirations and dares to engage with everyday human cognition. In doing so, the book is aligned with recent calls for entrepreneurship research. Just as Ramoglou and McMulen (2024) have interestingly argued that much previous research unnecessarily mystifies entrepreneurial opportunities, Cavarretta shows that the creation and seizing of opportunities are people’s adaptive responses to the business world’s uncertainty (Townsend et al., 2025).
Overall, as a behavioural scientist, I found the book to take a refreshingly human-centred view of entrepreneurship. France is a Paradise takes a penetrating view into the behaviour of the French (individual, organisational, and institutional) and how outsiders, including potential entrepreneurs or investors, (mis)conceive such behaviour. This emphasis on human psychology is juxtaposed with a Herbert-Simonian view of entrepreneurship as a science of the artificial (Sarasvathy, 2003), with the extra intrigue that the English translation has been provided by Claude Sonnet, professional though quirky at times. The various AI connections of this book can help readers critically reflect on how today’s business challenges may, or may not, be handled by AI, another topic of great interest for entrepreneurship research (Townsend et al., 2025).
This review asks what can France is a Paradise teach us about (1) an entrepreneurial milieu many love to look down upon (France), in relation to (2) a technology many hate to love (AI). These issues are (3) re-examined a decade after the original French edition.
Seriously, France? The book opens with a brief tour of the theoretical basics, such as defining necessity versus opportunity entrepreneurship and distinguishing between hygiene and opportunity factors (Chapters 1–2). All this is presented simply and clearly. France is a Paradise employs the device of four ‘typical [French] management profiles’ (p. 21), which is strategically invoked throughout the book to argue, with remarkable persistence, that France is a paradise. This case is the message of the book. How is it built? There are four themes supporting it.
First, Cavarretta, is a bona fide Parisian and professor in one of the city’s leading business schools, with considerable training and work experience in France, the United States and the United Kingdom, largely in tech. A testimonial to these credentials is included in the foreword of Xaviel Niel (pp. 5–7), founder of a major Internet service provider. Hence, France is a Paradise draws informed comparisons between France and countries considered more amenable to entrepreneurship. It is not always so that entrepreneurship researchers have had first-hand experience with the milieus they study, but this author does. This theme runs throughout the book.
The second theme is a thorough analysis of the French start-up ecosystem. This is where key knowledge is provided. In pp. 117–148, the author goes through the sectors where France excels, such as luxury and fashion, tourism (including agri-food) and engineering. This material might not be new to all readers, but it is very engaging. The surprise of France is a Paradise is its Part II wherein Cavarretta emphasizes the importance of hidden factors of value creation (pp. 62–113). At this point, the usual discourse is turned on its head, and French attributes such as a strong state and an attachment to heritage, are strongly argued to enable, even lead to, systemic opportunity creation. For instance, Cavarretta discusses tourism entrepreneurs who are able to leverage heritage to create value, as when showcasing the natural and cultural beauties around the river Loire to launch tours, or by renovating undervalued farmhouses in the Lot area into charming retirement homes (p. 68). The analysis is frank, acknowledging taboos such as the impact of military defence funding – not unlike in Silicon Valley and Israel! (pp. 68–71) – and of the elitist, yet excellent, educational system of ‘grandes écoles’ that the author knows well. Beyond the findings discussed, the theoretical lesson is how far-reaching the study of the environment for understanding the entrepreneur can be, a classic Simonian approach (Sarasvathy, 2003).
The third theme supporting the paradise case is a head-on confrontation with the dreaded obstacles of the French system; unhelpful public servants, restrictive labour law and prohibiting cost of labour, to name a few. Close to one-fourth of France is a Paradise (Chapters 13–17) is allocated to a balanced discussion of the situation. No excuses are made, and the author himself grumbles about ‘. . ..continuing to receive letters every two years for a supposed charge of a few tens of euros. . . unpaid 10 years ago!’ (p. 159). But the book smoothly goes on to point out that even paradises are not perfect and an entrepreneur in France needs an accountant just as an entrepreneur in Anglo-Saxon countries needs a lawyer (pp. 162–163). Presented with a right amount of irony, this point is indicative of the personal touch one enjoys in France is a Paradise. And this argument is one of the book’s slam dunks. This is not to say that all points hit home. For example, I am less convinced about how France is a Paradise navigates the difficult issue of outsourcing labour to developing countries to save costs, and thus perpetuating inequality, but this is beyond the scope of this review.
The fourth and final theme of the book refers to the psychology of individuals. The concluding chapters explore a paradoxical expression of French life; the French put effort in enjoying life but still moan about it. The suggestion is that the hesitation to start a business in France can, to some extent, be related to pessimism which leads to self-fulfilling, self-defeating prophecies. Perhaps this suggestion is discussed briefly (pp. 205–210) and is hard to evaluate. At least, true to the original meaning of Simon’s bounded rationality – a meaning often lost in management research (Lejarraga and Pindard-Lejarraga, 2020) – France is a Paradise manages to stay clear of settling for circular explanations in terms of individual cognitive or motivational biases. This book can help push the study of entrepreneurship outside isolated minds and into responses to the big world (Ramoglou and McMullen, 2024).
Enter large language models! France is a Paradise makes contact with AI in multiple ways, including that a sizeable proportion of French start-ups are in tech, the book’s analyses align with Simon’s ideas about the sciences of the artificial, and the occasionally poetic expressions one reads are, according to the author, mostly due to Claude (although the wittiest part of the original subtitle, ‘French bashing’, has been left out in the English edition). Thus, one might wonder if and how should France is a Paradise be modified by recent strides in AI, such as large language models.
I have myself sometimes been tempted to jump on the bandwagon and just wait for AI models to solve the problems of society and business but have gravitated to listening to voices that urge for caution and analysis (Townsend et al., 2025). Out of curiosity, I did the obvious thing and asked Gemini, ChatGPT and Grok: ‘Is France an entrepreneurial paradise?’ Lo and behold, all three – Grok was the most negative – recycled good old French bashing! I was told that, unlike say the United States, France is not ‘typically’ or ‘universally’ considered an entrepreneurial paradise, with the explanation supposedly being that, despite strengths such as a strong ecosystem, human capital, there are ‘challenges’ or ‘hurdles’ related to labour costs and law, bureaucracy among others.
Oh well. This is not the place to enter the debate about if and how large language models are able to incorporate key attributes of human intellect such as considering context, or lack enactive elements (Viale et al., 2023) to address difficult problems such as starting a company. But it seems to me that, at least on the topic of entrepreneurship in France, large language models can still learn from authentic and reflective voices (Hofstadter, 2023), as the one in France is a Paradise.
Still a paradise today? To wrap things up for this review, I asked the author about the main facts and arguments of the book today. He argued that the Macron presidency has not changed things much with respect to entrepreneurship, despite claims back in 2017 that France would change drastically regarding all things business. According to Cavarretta, the favourable factors such as government support, a good economy and talent are still there, and the annoyances of administration and accounting can still be dealt with.
I reviewed France is a Paradise as an informed generalist, one fascinated by the myriad expressions of human behaviour. Starting a business was always interesting to me but nebulous and, in a setting I did not know, too distant. The book cleared several cobwebs in my mind, and I think it will do for others too. France is a Paradise can spawn an abundance of thoughts on entrepreneurship and human behaviour more generally. The review started with an American president’s saying about France. Another American, pop punk musician Jonathan Richman, sang ‘Give Paris one more chance’, and I urge readers to give this book about a French paradise a chance.
