to page content
to site navigation
The Foundation's primary site.
Global news, events, and resources.
The national learning program for entrepreneurs.
A new approach to developing the next generation of high-growth firms.
Access to university research and innovation.
The Kauffman Foundation's charter school serving Kansas City.
Encouraging the aspirations of young people.
The platform for business plan competitions.
College preparation and access for urban youth in Kansas City.
A guide to Kauffman Foundation and partner resources, for aspiring entrepreneurs.
News and announcements from the Foundation.
From our vice president of Entrepreneurship.
From our vice president of Advancing Innovation.
News from Global Entrepreneurship Week
News about this education program for entrepreneurs.
Tweets for the eMed Community at Entrepreneurship.org
News from the Kauffman Labs program.
From our business plan competition service.
Contribute to the community seeking to improve entrepreneurship and innovation measurement.
A look at entrepreneurship from the Kauffman Foundation's Thom Ruhe.
Tracks research and policies that are accelerating economic growth and changing the world.
Brings to light various policies and initiatives to advance innovation and drive economic growth.
A selection of our videos
Take our video and audio with you.
Explore many of our publications.
Join the discussion on our LinkedIn site.
Join us on Google's social service.
The Resource Center has all the info you'll need From content to user feedback, the resource center has the information you need for every level of the entrepreneurial process.
While the Baltic countries are small compared to their EU partners, they are said to have an outsized role in generating new start-ups, particularly through their big ideas in the tech sector. Today, we look at Lithuania, which has been campaigning aggressively through Global Entrepreneurship Week in the Baltics and has rapidly been gaining a place on the entrepreneurial map.
While politicians are out of town campaigning, the nation’s capital has been welcoming leaders in entrepreneurship education from America’s colleges and universities. Following a warm up from the younger “Empact” entrepreneurship education advocates, I joined a packed summit of university and community college presidents at the White House put together by the Commerce Department’s Nish Acharya, and then spoke this past Friday at Jeff Reid’s Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centers conference at Georgetown University. It is increasingly clear that America’s colleges and universities have been retooling as engines of entrepreneurship and innovation.
When I asked two U.S. Senators from different parties earlier this year how they managed to work together on startup legislation during an election year, both talked of “credible, robust data” as their starting point. Last week I participated in the International Council for Small Business (ICSB) 3rd Annual Global Entrepreneurship Research and Policy Conference at George Washington University to see what was emerging outside the United States.
One of the major supporters of DEMO Africa and LIONS@frica with me in Nairobi last week was Nokia. As I took a look at just how much innovation Nokia has created, I was curious to look further into the current startup culture in its home country of Finland and see just how important high-growth entrepreneurship is to its economy.
While the world gathered in New York last week for the Clinton Global Initiative and UN General Assembly meetings, I elected to accept an invitation to head out of town to check up on progress with one of the world’s “strong government” economies grappling with how to reconcile a tradition of top-down government control with a desire for bottom up organic startup communities.
I report this week from Africa which is enjoying its greatest economic success in decades and where there has never been a better time to be an entrepreneur. With economic growth rates this year around 6 percent in one-third of the 49 sub-Saharan African countries, the IMF forecasts that Africa will have the fastest-growing economy of any continent over the next five years. The World Bank in turn has reported earlier this month that more than 20 sub-Saharan African countries, encompassing more than 400 million people, have gained middle-income status, while the number of people living in poverty is down by roughly 10 percentage points over the past decade.
As elections approach and there is a lot of debate on which is the best road to a robust economy with more jobs, policymakers should take time to listen to the message of the just-released Kaufman Foundation videos on the benefits of high-skilled immigration. With Washington being unwilling to separate the obviously different issues of high-skilled immigration and how to handle illegal immigrants, a net job gain strategy remains hostage to politics as usual in the nation’s capitol.
While the startup genome in Silicon Valley is always mutating, some formulas are becoming basic tenets in the science of startups. A critical mass of email about my use of the word “iterative” in my blogs prompts me to revisit one such startup fundamental—the so called “Lean Startup” formula.
From an outsider perspective, Belgium has a very diverse economy with dozens of influences coming together at its prime location in the heart of the EU. Being the home to several major European universities, and a mix of service-based economy in the north and industrial-based in the south, Belgium has a diverse market structure that keeps it competitive and one of the highest income per capita economies in the world. However, when it comes to entrepreneurship, Belgium is not thriving.
Want to get connected? Sign up to receive regular news, polls and updates from The Kauffman Foundation.
