While historians and commentators will analyze President Obama's first 100 days, entrepreneurs will likely remember the administration's 107th day, when a key step was taken to further unleash our country's entrepreneurial potential.
On May 5th, First Lady Michelle Obama announced the creation of a White House Social Innovation Fund, with the mandate to tackle the issues of our day by supporting the most innovative non-profits and social entrepreneurs. Although the funding is directed at the non-profit sector, this historic commitment to promoting the ideals of entrepreneurship by encouraging innovation and recognizing the power of individual determination will resonate throughout the economy.
In many respects, all entrepreneurs are "social entrepreneurs" -- from those who develop new green technologies to those who commercialize new life-saving medical technologies to those who create jobs that enable people to be productive citizens in our economy and society. We rely on entrepreneurs -- in non-profit and for-profit sectors alike -- to expand individual opportunity and improve standards of living in our communities across America.
American history makes clear that we cannot have a sustained economic recovery without yet another burst of entrepreneurial energy. Many of our most innovative companies, from Disney to Genentech to Black Entertainment Television to Whole Foods Market, were launched during economic downturns or bear markets. Since 1980, new companies less than five-years-old have accounted for literally all net job growth in the United States.
Entrepreneurial ideas are also behind many of the once-radical technologies upon which our modern society now rests: the automobile, the airplane, electricity generation, computers, software, and Internet search.
We must continue to foster the formation and growth of the next wave of companies that will become tomorrow's innovators and job creators. At the same time, we must also provide the training and resources that enable successful non-profits in communities nationwide to expand their reach.
At the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, we know that entrepreneurial activity is the key to a sustained economy recovery. Through a broad range of programs, we aim to create social value by equipping individuals to take charge of their own economic destinies. Our Urban Entrepreneurship Partnership, for example, offers coaching to minority business owners so they are able to grow their companies to scale, while our FastTrac program is providing needed training and mentoring to aspiring entrepreneurs across the country -- including many who have been laid off in cities particularly hard-hit by the recession, such as New York and Detroit. These programs promote real opportunities where opportunities aren't always plentiful.
On the innovation front, we are committed to expanding our support to educate the next generation of green energy scientists and entrepreneurs, and have established a Translational Medicine Alliance that aims to help scientists accelerate the commercialization of technologies that will cure diseases.
Across America, entrepreneurs are bringing innovations to life and creating jobs in the process. These efforts are also providing creative solutions for protecting our environment and providing services to people in need. We must do all we can to support them.
As Mrs. Obama said the other night, we should not miss the "opportunity to inspire a new generation of innovators and entrepreneurs who will direct their energy and talent toward solving their community's -- and our nation's -- most serious social problems."
Promoting and enabling this entrepreneurial spirit will create jobs, solve problems and improve lives across the nation. In that respect, all entrepreneurs truly are "social entrepreneurs" and we applaud Mrs. Obama for taking a lead role in making the resources and support available for ensuring entrepreneurial values translate into genuine social value.
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Two big issues for the small biz person: health care and available credit. How do we as a country compete in a global market with all of the other countries using a single payer health care system? And now that the banks have screwed themselves
I can't think of anything more patriotic than strongly standing behind this country's entreprene
Entreprene
The 2009 Report can be downloaded free at aesopinsti
The 1977 job tax credit program, which adopted a few of the incentives recommende
There are now two versions. The full 52 page document contains a new economic analysis. A shorter version contains the Summary and a total of 15 pages. The tax incentives in the Human Investment Tax Credit program have been updated and can be debated and voted into law.
Readers and the Kaufman Foundation might want to urge your Representa
My company is under 10 people and is already in the green environmen
What's happening in the financial industry is very relevant to the fortunes of entreprene
After fifteen years, I still cannot get a bank loan without my personal guarantee. The business is profitable
A risky plan that will work. Give five million successful companies each a non-secure
Most government folks don't have the entreprene
The alternativ
You can call it names ("thuggery
rwext and his/her compatriou
1) I am a hard working person
2) The EFCA is necessary to the growth of the middle class and therefore to the growth of America's economy. I wholeheart
Health care is a major cost to us. And, it is more expensive for us to acquire than it is for our competitor
Government
However, government sponsored health care that forces every company, even small companies to pay, instead of taking a change to the tax structure, would be just another opportunit
I fear that the Obama plan is to force companies, even the smallest, to pay for health care. The costs will go up even more - because we'll have to pay for all the unemployed
Given the Obama Administra
We now have a President who gives more rights to junior debtholder
We also have a President who has created class warfare beyond imaginatio
Things are about to get very, very weird in the business world.
Bank on it! No pun intended.
So what is this? Denial? Schizophre
On the other hand, there are plenty of media outlets promoting fear and divisivene
Obama wont renegotiat
The Most Dangerous Man in China
His name is Lou Jiwei, and in many ways he's the most dangerous man in China " especially if you're in the market for a mortgage.
As the head of the China Investment Corp (CIC), it is Mr. Jiwei's job to invest a portion of China's growing supply of U.S. dollars. And with equities now in an uptrend, how Mr. Jiwei manages this mountain of money may well set the course of interest rates in the States for years to come.
That's because if Mr. Jiwei is ultimately successful in building wealth through investment
How China decides to invest those surplus dollars in the future will likely leave U.S. Treasuries hanging by a rather tenuous thread, since massive Chinese demand in the past is what helped to keep rates so low in the first place.
The U.S. Treasury Bubble: a Train Wreck Waiting to Happen
That outcome that is even more likely now " especially since there will be a massive flood of new government borrowing meeting a market of slack demand. Treasury prices will fall as a result, pushing yields higher and bursting the bubble
I'm damned if I can figure out the difference between an entreprene
All business, no matter what form they take, must consider the consumer, or they won't be in business for long. They also have to sell a product or service that the consumer needs and/or wants, or they won't be in business for long.
Nobody forces a consumer to purchase any product or service. Relating this to our current crisis, no consumer should take out a mortgage without knowing all the facts of that mortgage. No consumer should buy a mortgage backed security without knowing all the facts and risks of those securities
Entreprene
If there were not so many barriers to entry in the FOR-PROFIT world, perhaps I would agree with you that the President (or his wife) are moving us forward. Take a look at the federal requiremen
I appreciate your comittment to Non-Profit
The bureaucrat
It is hard to argue with this fact however as class warfare has become a successful political strategy.
It soon becomes evident that those waging the war know very little about business and less about Wall Street. That might mitigate one's reaction to the ignorance, but it doesn't mitigate the potential damage done by an uninformed electorate
That's a Marxist notion and it basically means a state which sooner or later ends in revolution and taking away property from the wealthy. It's completely theoretica
Making sure that employees can pay their bills (i.e. consume) and have access to health insurance isn't class warfare.
What an entreprene
But the to-and-fro between entreprene
Read what Warren Buffet has to say about that:
http://www
Read the works of E F Shumacher and you will better understand what is a desirable free enterprise system and what is not. We are all victims of Big Bidness and small business people in particular