Week of April 18 - April 22, 2005

Welcome to the National Dialogue on Entrepreneurship, an initiative of the Public Forum Institute made possible by a grant from the Kauffman Foundation of Kansas City. Through NDE-news, we bring you short summaries and analyses of various trends driving the innovation economy. Subscribe now to receive your weekly copy. Archived issues are available online. Links to the day's entrepreneurship stories from across the nation and around the world are posted each weekday on the NDE main page - bookmark it and stay informed about the latest entrepreneurship news. 

Mexican – and Mexican-American – Entrepreneurship

An interesting new National Bureau of Economic Research paper takes a look at Mexican entrepreneurship, and compares self-employment rates between Mexicans and Mexican immigrants to the U.S. In most cases, immigrants are much more likely to be self-employed than are native-born Americans. Surprisingly, Mexican-American self-employment rates (6%) are much lower than the average for all Americans (11%). Meanwhile, in Mexico, self-employment rates are quite high (25% of the population). The difference between self-employment rates in Mexico and the US are expected. Higher income countries tend to have lower rates of self-employment. But what explains the low rates among Mexican-Americans? The researchers find that while legal Mexican immigrants have near average self-employment rates, overall rate of self-employment for Mexican-Americans falls below average. For this reason, they suggest that language barriers and issues around legal status block self-employment as an option for many Mexican immigrants. As their legal status becomes more secure, Mexican immigrants are much more likely to consider entrepreneurial ventures.

The National Bureau of Economic Research paper, Mexican Entrepreneurship: A Comparison of Self-Employment Rates in Mexico and the United States, by Robert Fairlie and Christopher Woodruff, is available at http://www.nber.org/books/mexico/fairlie-woodruff3-23-05.pdf

Entrepreneurship in the Middle East

Democratization and development in the Middle East will not occur via political means alone. They must also be accompanied by a vibrant private sector with lots of exciting entrepreneurial activity. A new website and blog from AME Info, a provider of business information from the Middle East, should help on this front. The e-Entrepreneur website covers the Middle East entrepreneurship beat with a list of regional resources and regular blogs and articles on leading trends. Entrepreneurs can also use the site to promote their business and to relate their own experiences in building new ventures. The site currently features new technology for translation of the Koran, and an introduction to Rent-on-Net, a new business created by students at Sultan Qaboos University in the Sultanate of Oman.

E-Entrepreneur, a joint initiative of AME Info and the United Arab Emirates’ Zayed University’s Institute of Technological Innovation, can be accessed at: http://www.ameinfo.com/news/E-Entrepreneur/

Pittsburgh’s Technology Outlook

The Pittsburgh Technology Council is one of the leading local technology organizations in the U.S. Each year, it produces an outlook for the local technology industry that examines areas of progress and challenge. This year’s version has been released, and it offers an in-depth look at the state of technology in the region around Pittsburgh. It has been many years since Pittsburgh was a steel town; it’s more of a technology center today as technology-related businesses accounted for 17.3% of the region’s workforce in 2003. This number is impressive, but it represents a decline that has persisted for several years. However, the Council’s diagnosis is that the industry is now on the upswing, and it predicts continued recovery. Enhanced support for local entrepreneurs is a key part of the Council’s strategy to build on this recovery. The report encourages the region’s leaders to pay more attention to small businesses and to support the growth of these new companies. 

State of the Industry Report 2005: The Pittsburgh Region by the Pittsburgh Technology Council is available at http://news.pghtech.org/report.cfm. Registration is required.

Conference on Innovation Policy

If you’re an innovation policy expert and happen to be in Washington DC tomorrow, you might want to head to the National Press Club for a National Bureau of Economic Research symposium on Innovation Policy and the Economy. This symposium is part of a regular series that brings together some of the best academic minds who are examining issues around technology, innovation, finance and entrepreneurship. Several papers focus on long-standing problems with American patent laws and its overall intellectual property protection regime. Others examine the consumer impact of the Internet, and the changing face of the science and technology workforce.

The program, as well as preliminary papers, for the National Bureau of Economic Research Conference on Innovation Policy and the Economy, can be accessed at: http://www.nber.org/~confer/2005/IPEs05/IPEs05program.html

Financing Start-Ups in Ireland

Don’t accuse the Irish government of ignoring the importance of start-ups to the country’s economic health. Last week, the Bank of Ireland unveiled an aggressive and ambitious program to help finance start-up businesses. The program offers a range of services, but the bottom line is that new entrepreneurs will be able to receive up to two years of free services (e.g. for accounts, resource guides, credit cards) and reduced costs for various support services and consultancy. The overall value of this support is set at approximately 1,500 Euros. The package was developed in response to research that indicated that many Irish start-ups begin life with insufficient capital resources and that many new entrepreneurs are hungry for access to technical support services. Its explicit goal is to help increase the absolute number and the subsequent survival rates of Irish start-up businesses. This initiative is another follow-on effort from the Enterprise Strategy Group report released in July 2004. This study argued that support for new enterprises must be a central component in Ireland’s overall economic strategy.

The Irish Enterprise Strategy Group report is available at http://www.forfas.ie/esg/. To learn more about the Bank of Ireland program, visit http://www.bankofireland.ie/updates/Article?PR_ID=1055

Kauffman Foundation    The Public Forum Institute

National Dialogue on Entrepreneurship
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Mark Marich, Editor

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