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Jonathan Ortmans

Measuring Entrepreneurship Around the World

I returned this weekend from the Aspen Institute’s annual meeting of development entrepreneurs in New York where fresh thinkers were hard at work looking for new approaches to impactful international economic development. USAID Administrator Dr. Rajiv Shah sought out the opportunity to present his new vision for his agency, and Carl Schramm, President of the Kauffman Foundation, challenged the traditional strategic and intellectual platform that has driven the tired policies of decades of Washington consensus thinking around how we stimulate global economic growth.

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Posted by: Jonathan Ortmans
on October 04, 2010
Comments (3)
Category:  General  Growth & Poverty 
Bolivia: Advancing a Nascent Entrepreneurial Ecosystem

Like many developing countries, Bolivia has a nascent, but promising entrepreneurial environment. The country has a good number of institutions that offer financial and technical services that network the country’s millions of micro-entrepreneurs. However, as readers of this blog are well aware, data has confirmed time and again that it is young firms that grow that provide the most benefits to society in terms of job and wealth creation and innovation. Thus, the challenge ahead for Bolivia is to enable more growth entrepreneurs.

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Posted by: Jonathan Ortmans
on September 20, 2010
Comments (4)
Category:  Global  Growth & Poverty 
Start-Ups Continue to “Bloom” in Argentina

In the 90s, Argentina became Latin America’s Internet center, which was a good sign of an entrepreneurial spirit among its people. Endeavor, the United States nonprofit that helps foster high impact entrepreneurship, had its first success in the developing world in Argentina just before the country’s last major financial collapse. Given Argentina’s turbulent economic history, I thought I would take a quick look at the role of entrepreneurs over the past 10 years since Argentina’s Internet startup boom.

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Posted by: Jonathan Ortmans
on September 13, 2010
Comments (3)
Category:  General  Global  Growth & Poverty 
The State of Entrepreneurship in Chile

The Chilean economy has been recognized as the most competitive of Latin America. In general, Chile has been characterized by political and economic stability and relatively low levels of corruption and offers one of the most advanced physical infrastructure systems in the region. The potential and proven track record of this economy has led to Chile’s recent accession to the OECD as its 31st member and its first member in South America. Not surprisingly, Chile is often a case study in economic development. The question is whether its model will show the power of entrepreneurship as an engine for prosperity?

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Posted by: Jonathan Ortmans
on August 30, 2010
Comments (5)
Category:  Global  Growth & Poverty 
Catalyzing Global Entrepreneurship Support

Following up on chatter following my blog last week discussing the need for caution around the quality of interventions that seek to provide technical support to entrepreneurs, I will continue the conversation thread this week with a post discussing another  innovative entrepreneurial support program  - iStart, which happens to open for business today.

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Posted by: Jonathan Ortmans
on August 16, 2010
Comments (0)
Assessing Skill Building Programs for Entrepreneurs

With nearly all net job growth in our country coming from companies less than five years old, Congress has debated this year what the role of government should be in developing programs and interventions that support entrepreneurship. While the World Bank’s Doing Business project reported a record number of new pro-entrepreneurship legal and regulatory reforms around the world in 2009, governments and multi-national institutions continue to be tempted to develop entrepreneurship development programs.

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Posted by: Jonathan Ortmans
on August 09, 2010
Comments (6)
Category:  General 
Tracking Early Stage Investors

Access to funding is often mentioned in meetings about how to enable high impact entrepreneurship. We are always reminded that bank lending to small businesses remains tight. Even loans subsidized by the Small Business Administration have dropped off in recent months. Venture capital was prominent historically for its role in financially catalyzing high-growth companies, but has over the years become less significant in spurring entrepreneurship. So what are angel investors up to this summer?

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Posted by: Jonathan Ortmans
on August 03, 2010
Comments (1)
Category:  General 
Combing the World for Cleantech Entrepreneurs

This year has brought a lot of productive give-and-take of ideas on clean energy innovation by people around the world who saw opportunity rather than doom in the combination of environmental and financial challenges. Last May, for example, I joined over 140 participants from all...

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Posted by: Jonathan Ortmans
on July 25, 2010
Comments (1)
Category:  Energy  Environment 
Iceland: Conquering the Economic Crisis with Entrepreneurship
Amidst all the bad news in Iceland related to the economic crisis and the disruption caused earlier this year by the Eyjafjallajokull volcano, the country has seen some entrepreneurial silver linings. The stream of positive signs I noticed began in March this year when Iceland... [More]
Posted by: Jonathan Ortmans
on July 18, 2010
Comments (3)
Category:  Global 
Beyond the World Cup: A Diamond for Growth
Spain’s victory yesterday in the World Cup in Johannesburg marks the conclusion to an exciting competition. However, with the media pointing to some of the dashed economic expectations among South Africans these past few weeks, I decided to inquire a little more into the entrepreneurial... [More]
Posted by: Jonathan Ortmans
on July 12, 2010
Comments (1)
Category:  Global 

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