Well it is my final hours in Davos and the WEF has left the most important session to the last day -- The Entrepreneurship Imperative. Throughout the week there has been constant references to the need for entrepreneurs to be the future engine of both developed and developing economies, but this is the first time we are gathering to discuss effective strategies to make this happen. We are finally getting to the question -- "How can entrepreneurship education drive inclusive growth and job creation?"
The organization I lead, the Network for Teacher Entrepreneurship (NFTE), was founded by Steve Mariotti on one basic principle: teaching young people living in poverty how to create wealth for themselves is the surest path to poverty alleviation. More simply put, ownership equals prosperity. And really how do we ensure inclusive economic growth -- by opening the path to ownership to as many people as possible.
Entrepreneurship education does that. NFTE does that. We work in low-income communities across the globe training public school teachers to use entrepreneurship education to inspire over 30,000 young people each year, to see opportunities they never imagined. With 0.13% of the world's population controlling over 25% of its financial assets, there is not a moment to wait in opening the doors to ownership wider than ever before.
Entrepreneurship speaks to our belief that hard work and ingenuity in the face of daunting obstacles can lead to personal fulfillment and collective progress. Students may understand this intuitively, but do not have the knowledge and skills to apply this vision to their own lives. Without exposure to entrepreneurship education, it is easy for young people to believe that this story applies to someone else or that entrepreneurship depends on luck. Overcoming these myths, while preparing students to succeed in school and in the 21st century economy, has the potential to transform the futures of our young people.
What I find interesting is that we are even discussing how important entrepreneurship is to job creation. Just last year, the Kauffman Foundation published a report finding that all net new jobs in the U.S. over the last 30 years can be fully attributed to startups. So clearly this is where job creation will come from.
Recently I came across one other statistic that I found ironic. In the U.S., 9.6% of American adults are actively engaged in starting a business or are the owner/manager of a business that is less than three and one-half years old. This sounded great to me until I remembered that the current U.S. unemployment rate at 9.4%.
The alignment of those numbers helped me see a simple solution. Entrepreneurship. We need to create a movement to double the number of Americans who start their own enterprises. Then we can solve unemployment. People will create their own jobs.
As a member of President Obama's Advisory Council on Financial Capability leading the work on youth, I feel a particular responsibility to trumpet the impact that entrepreneurship education can have. After all we cannot expect the revolution of startups to materialize out of thin air. We must invest in programs like NFTE that inspire young people to think and act like entrepreneurs. They need to be armed with resilient tools that allow them to claim ownership and be full participants in our economy. We will not reap the harvest of new jobs and innovation without first planting the seeds of entrepreneurship in minds of young people far and wide.
And on a related subject, next year perhaps we can have a session at Davos to discuss an initiative targeting young girls as our future entrepreneurs. Convincing data is growing that in fact women often outperform the men in this sector.
So now I must run and catch my train. I certainly hope there are some entrepreneurial young people outside willing to help me with my bags. With all of us tired and weary middle agers leaving at once, that's a real market opportunity.
The author may have a mandate to focus on youthful entrepreneurship, but somewhere in recent times I read that middle aged people who have the money, experience, and stability to start something represent a significant slice of entrepreneurs. I'm just saying, please don't short change them.
See a Human Investment Tax Credit program and A New, New Deal, at: www.aesopinstitute.org for new ways to finance startups and broaden ownership.
These ideas can attract support all across the political spectrum.
They build on proven techniques and tools that make uncommon sense.
Amy Rosen. President & CEO, Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship:
"As a member of President Obama's Advisory Council on Financial Capability leading the work on youth, I feel a particular responsibility to trumpet the impact that entrepreneurship education can have."
It is almost impossible for one person, without big enough money even with the best ideas to compete in globalization environment.
Combination of Government support with free enterprise helps China in advanced achievement.
We need understood, that our transportation system is relic from previous century. Heavy cars, buses, trains, high speeds trains can't work as new transportation for 6 billions of people on the earth.
We need to understand that in power plants we are losing 80% of energy in vain.
We need to understand that climate scientists do not analyze situation where we lose energy, the same as they are wrong that carbon dioxide is main player in nature.
We must create instead of Environment Protection Agency - Environment for Profit Agency, where scientists, engineers, inventors collect ideas and implement them ready to production and sell them as franchise to anyone, who want to be a businessman (woman).
This agency on level of NASA, could create real jobs, good for environment and profit.
Politicians are only politicians- they could offer only yesterday solutions, which could create jobs on few years, after that.
Having run a business for nigh on twenty years, I can say that one of the smartest things I did was to start that business in times of financial exuberance. When a company is at its very smallest (i.e. one or two people), it must maximize its financial return from its extremely limited capability to build product or to perform labor. The financial resources needed for warehousing, shipping, and other issues, are generally not available. (Many a foolish entrepreneur has put his own house up as collateral, and wound up both unemployed and homeless.) You have to get a no-collateral loan, and probably the only time you can do this is when banks are feeling flush.
Furthermore, let's face it: an entrepreneural company is SMALL. Even when it has grown a few years. Most of the things that America will very soon need will require enormous capital investment ... which must be made in United States Dollars, and which will have to be made by American companies who will still accept what has suddenly become an "un-pegged to anything," hence "wildly inflated" Dollar.
Imagine: "America finally being forced to do ... for America, using Americans ... because the 'cheap labor' and 'easy imports' are suddenly no more to be had."