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.
We are a week away from another historic global entrepreneurship event - this time in Shanghai, China, for the annual gathering of global leaders in the entrepreneurial movement led by the Kauffman Foundation.
America’s fiscal health remains currently at the heart of most economic policy chatter. We are living in tight fiscal times. Congress has been focusing on reaching agreements on reducing spending and budget battles are expected to wage on throughout much of this year. Since balancing the budget is inseparable from tax policy, we take a quick look this week at how taxes shape incentives for entrepreneurs.
This week, I was invited to join the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Trade Ministerial in Big Sky, Montana. This regional bloc meeting remains one of the most important venues for discussing global economic policy. It is also one that has paid attention to the role of entrepreneurs in achieving its goals of trade and cooperation for growth.
I hope that like me, you have had the chance to witness the burgeoning phenomenon of entrepreneurship curriculum in American higher education. More and more, students have the opportunity to explore entrepreneurship on campus. In the process of creating entrepreneurship programs, universities have become more entrepreneurial themselves. This is great news. Colleges and universities are natural incubators of creativity and new ways of looking at things. And this new reality might mean that colleges and universities are better preparing students for success in the American economy where more professionals need to make their own jobs.
One hundred years of banked future hydrocarbon revenues, massive investments in higher education and a common legal framework based on western law all offer this small nation—the size of Connecticut—tremendous potential to be a hub for startups in the GCC. I find it curious therefore that at Qatar’s famous “Doha Forum” I participated in today, entrepreneurship and startups were not on the agenda.
Over time I have become increasingly confused as to the meaning of “youth entrepreneurship.” While the myth of entrepreneurs as “modern day Mozarts” in garages (to borrow Carl Schramm’s phrase) is slowly being dispelled, it seems our human instinct to avoid conversations about age is alive and well! The reason this matters now is because governments and non-governmental organizations around the globe appear to be ramping up investment in “youth enterprise.”
Late September is always a busy
time in New York and Washington for world leaders. New York is crowded with
heads of state and visionaries at the UN Assembly or the Clinton Global
Initiative, and in Washington, DC, the World Bank Group and IMF
Annual Meetings that took place this past weekend always spur an assortment
of organizations with global economic development missions to gather their
flocks. We all wonder what all these expensive ‘meetings of the minds’ are
accomplishing. To share my own bias, it prompts me once a year to check in and
see how much development bureaucrats are really seeing and listening to the
entrepreneurs on the ground doing the work.
We have heard several entrepreneurship-based proposals recently to get our economy back on track, but one piece seemed to be missing this whole time in the debate: re-evaluating Sarbanes-Oxley for young firms. We have long known that the compliance costs associated with SOX—particularly section 404—have been discouraging many companies from going public, thereby blocking their access to capital and growth. Researchers have suggested that Congress address this issue in some way, and a measure to allow shareholders of companies with market cap below $1 billion to opt-in under SOX was one of the ideas floated in the Startup Act released mid-July. The measure is now gaining track in Congress.
Malaysia transformed itself from a producer of raw materials in the 1970s into an upper-middle income country with a multi-sector economy by the late 1990s. The 1997 crisis significantly challenged this technology-exporting country, but it has since successfully sparked two main sources of economic resilience—foreign investment and new firm creation. To my surprise, Malaysian entrepreneurs I spoke with recently gave a great deal of credit to, of all actors on the stage, their government. Did government really do something right?
In two weeks, Global Entrepreneurship Week kicks off with more than 40,000 events spread out over a seven day period in 123 countries. At competitions like Startup Open for the most promising new startups in 60 countries, to tournaments for cleantech ideas, at stadiums where entrepreneurship will meet music and sports, from heads of state to high school competitions, Global Entrepreneurship Week has become a movement for the next generation of startups and entrepreneurs inspired by the possibility of human endeavor for the benefit of all.
Want to get connected? Sign up to receive regular news, polls and updates from The Kauffman Foundation.
