Speeding Up Innovation and Entrepreneurship With the White House's Startup America Initiative

Earlier today we had the honor of attending the White House launch of "Startup America," a national campaign designed in the spirit of President Obama's statement this past weekend that "America will win the future by out-innovating, out-educating, and out-building our competitors."

We applaud the president's new focus on entrepreneurship and innovation, and support his efforts to inspire American businesses and thought leaders to mobilize in partnerships for purpose. We are both ready to do our part, and hope that you are too. In fact, go to the Startup America Partnership website and tell us more about how you can help!

The White House is doing its best to make things happen when it comes to partnering with and inspiring the business community to engage in initiatives to rekindle the proud legacy of American leadership in innovation. Today, everyone from NEC Director Gene Sperling to serial entrepreneur Brad Feld shared their belief that entrepreneurship is a core American value and a key source of our competitive advantage in a 21st century economy, as emphasized in the President's State of the Union speech and today with the White House launch of the Startup America initiative.


But come on folks, we know the president, and the government as a whole, cannot do it alone. We all need to work hard together to realize this vision. We must embrace opportunities to forge public-private partnerships, which have proven a successful model for building momentum to renew America's reputation for greatness.

The StartUP America Partnership (SUAP) is launching simultaneously as the private sector counterpart to the Obama administration's effort to spark, and accelerate, high-growth firms in America. Just as quality education, affordable college and career training programs are vital ingredients for fostering the next generation of American innovators, so too is this new Startup America initiative important to create the supportive platform for entrepreneurs to thrive.

As mentioned in the Wall Street Journal today, this initiative is part of a larger partnership for the purpose of spurring entrepreneurship. SUAP convenes an alliance of the country's most innovative entrepreneurs, corporations, universities, foundations, federal agencies and other leaders working together to rapidly grown the number of American entrepreneurs. Designed to encourage private sector investment in job-creating startups and small businesses, SUAP will provide a launching pad for innovators of the next Google or Facebook to come along. As we have seen with those examples, successful entrepreneurs grow their enterprises quickly, creating quality jobs in communities across America. 

The Startup America Partnership will empower entrepreneurs with the skills and resources to grow 21st century companies and industries to solve some of our toughest global challenges in clean energy, medicine, advanced manufacturing, information technology, and other fields.

Steve Case, chairman of the Case Foundation, summarizes this effort as follows:

"America's story has been forged in large part by entrepreneurs who have against great odds created innovative products and services that have changed the world - and created millions of jobs. Our nation once again looks to these creative risk-takers to unleash the next wave of American innovation, and I am pleased that President Obama has made supporting and celebrating entrepreneurs a major priority of his economic strategy. I am honored to chair the Startup America Partnership, and look forward to working with the White House to champion the creation of new start-ups, and help accelerate the growth of speed-ups."

National Economic Council Director Gene Sperling echoed the excitement at today's launch, noting that, "We are seeing the importance of the public-private partnerships building momentum from both the private and public sectors and non-profits. This is the exact right time to have a start-up. It is these times that people come together and take a chance."

The two of us are jumping into this effort with both feet, and are ready to get to work immediately.

Dr. Washington will serve as the interim CEO of the Startup America Partnership.

Marc is launching ARTISTS & INSTIGATORS, yet another innovative and ahead of its time effort echoing the principles of the Partnership by convening a variety of stakeholders -- from socially motivated corporations, foundations, private investors, and education reformers -- to help craft a new engine that re-imagines how the next generation of entrepreneurship will be realized. 

Marc and his team are developing the A&I Practicum, a call to action to realize $1 billion in investment by 2016 in 750 new startup companies, create 20,000 apprenticeships, and democratize access to entrepreneurial learning amongst high schools, community colleges, universities and veteran job retraining programs. The belief is that we can no longer afford to be incremental. It is the responsibility of the private sector to activate on our President's "think big" challenge. This is our generation's time. Angst is clearly in the air. But if you look between the lines, there is also a rising energy from those who are eager to activate and are looking for the platform to realize their ambitions.

To learn more about the Startup America Partnership initiative co-funded by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and the Case Foundation, please visit startupamericapartnership.org and follow the latest developments on Twitter. [@startupamerica]

Together we can inspire an ever-greater diversity of communities and individuals to build the next generation of exceptional American innovators and entrepreneurs.

 

Follow Marc Ecko on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@MarcEcko

Comments

[raphaelbonee]

10:36 AM on 02/02/2011

Here we go again ... stop, juststop. As business men and owners we all look up to our economic brethren but sometimes we forget they are not business men. Business men and owners also bring awealth of knowledge and experience to the table. So here it is

1. A company that doesn't collect royalties and enforce its patents fails. It is as simple as that.

It is the same with a country.

2. A country that doesn't collect tariffs and enforce its trade laws will fail.

The arguments for "freetrade" seem pretty silly when you look at it from the standpoint of this country being your company.

Of course cheaper products could be had ifyou werenot allowed to collect royalties. Of course you pay your workers ahigher wage, better benefits aspart of the cost of developing your country/company. Andof course yourworkers have ahigher standard of living than other workers living inother countries/companies. It's called success.

Now I know what just happened ... you just looked over at your accountant/economist and he looked back and smiled. "Freetrade" he said "you just need to keep coming up with good ideas", "get rid of those high price workers" he said "bigger pie, bigger pie" ... laying the whipon pretty thick foran employee don't you think.

Any economist worth his salt couldhave predicted whathas happened tothe United States under freetrade. Thefact thatthey didn't speaks volumes. But then "economist are not businessmen ... perhaps we should stop looking atthem asif they were".

[Jeff Bennett]

10:17 AM on 02/02/2011

I think Start Up America is a great idea. I have participated as a Mentor and Judge in the TechStars and MassChallenge programs. These are vibrant ecosystems for startups and experienced entrepreneurs to join forces. It has been a very positive experience here in Boston. Entrepreneurship is very important for us to stimulate new ideas, innovative products and services and employment. I am glad to see this initiative kicked off. I also posted about it: http://www.jeffbennett.com/2011/02/start-up-america-partnership-is-good-for-america/

[Mike Green]

03:22 AM on 02/02/2011

Startup America is the right stimulant at the right time. http://BlackInnovation.org is a startup that launched three weeks ago. And we're loaded with rocket fuel. Our goal is to facilitate the transformation of 20th century Black America into the 21st century Innovation Economy.

There is a tremendous need within this demographic. But no one is coming to save us. We must save ourselves. the Black Innovation and Competitiveness Initiative (BICI) will build an entrepreneurial infrastructure and ecosystem that leverages existing and new resources to help high growth entrepreneurial endeavors achieve exponential growth.

Our focus is on three core pillars: STEM education, capital resources and high growth entrepreneurship.

Check us out at blackinnovation.org

[Brian Glassman]

11:15 PM on 02/01/2011

Innovation is a vital part of economic progress, actually my academic journal wrote a great article on this topic titled "rebalancing the innovation policy debate", if you are interested in further reading look for it on Scribd.com or go to the journal home page.

http://innovationscience.org or http://www.multi-science.co.uk/ijis.htm
Dr. Brian Glassman
Ph.D. in Innovation Management from Purdue University