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Kauffman – State of Entreprenuership Video
2010 State of Entrepreneurship Address
Carl Schramm, president and CEO of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, delivered the “2010 State of Entrepreneurship Address” on January 19, 2010, on the heels of alarming unemployment numbers and citing sobering new data that show a majority of American entrepreneurs do not expect to create jobs in 2010. He called on policymakers to make this cornerstone of American capitalism a priority.
During an event at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. that included perspectives from entrepreneurs and remarks from U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke, Schramm underscored the importance of entrepreneurs to economic recovery, emphasizing that hundreds of new companies are being created each day.
Comments worth repeating from this speech and the panel:
- Reform immigration policy to accommodate founders (and investors) who will start new companies and create jobs.
- Revise Sarbanes-Oxley to allow company shareholders to make a choice based on the costs of compliance vs. the benefits.
- Provide a temporary payroll tax holiday to companies less than five years old.
- Give academic entrepreneurs the choice of multiple avenues to commercialize their research so their innovations can reach consumers more quickly.
- Offer fellowships for doctoral graduates in scientific fields to educate them about how to start companies.
- Provide entrepreneurship education and training to students in high school and college.
- Encourage universities with formal entrepreneurship programs to tenure ONLY those professors that have started a business
Thanks for raising awareness of these issues. Unfortunately, since 2000 we have passed a number of laws and regulations that are killing innovation in the US. The incredible innovation of the 90s was based on technology start-up companies built on intellectual capital, financial capital, and human capital. All three of the pillars have been under attack since 2000. Our patent laws have been weakened reducing the value of intellectual capital. Sarbanes Oxley has made it impossible to go public reducing financial capital for start-ups and the FASB rules on stock options have made it harder to attract human capital to start-ups. The Decline and Fall of the American Entrepreneur: How Little Known Laws and Regulations are Killing Innovation, explains these problems in more detail.