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Week of September 12 - 16, 2005Welcome 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. |
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Rebuilding Business after Hurricane Katrina
As residents of the Gulf
Coast region try to pick up and get on with their lives, the region’s
business owners face their own daunting challenges. In addition to
rebuilding their homes, they must also rebuild their livelihoods.
Natural disasters can hit small businesses especially hard. These firms
lack the resource base and the staffing levels that are often needed to
rebuild and recover. In an effort to support these firms, the White
House has announced a whole series of measures designed to help small
businesses affected by Hurricane Katrina. The US Small Business
Administration (SBA) operates an extensive disaster recovery program to
aid affected small businesses. The program provides a series of loans to
affected business and residents. Residents can borrow up to $200,000 to
repair primary residences and up to $40,000 to replace damaged property.
Meanwhile, businesses can borrow up to $1.5 million to repair and
replace damaged property. The business loans are offered at a 4% rate
for up to thirty years. Economic Injury Disaster Loans are also
available for small business owners unable to meet operating expenses or
pay bills. In last year’s hurricanes, SBA approved more than $2.1
billion in disaster loans. Experts expect much greater demand for such
support in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. |
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R&D 2005: A Corporate Scorecard
The September 2005 edition
of Technology Review contains its annual review of corporate R&D
activity. The corporate scorecard ranks firms across a variety of
measures including R&D spending, growth in such spending, and R&D
spending as a percentage of sales and total employment. The good news is
that corporate R&D spending is up. The four big spending sectors are
biotechnology, semiconductors, pharmaceuticals/medical devices, and
computer software. Research spending in biotechnology is especially
robust, growing an average of 69% over last year’s levels. The scorecard
also ranks firms based on these measures, and the top five are (in rank
order): Sanofi-Aventis, Microsoft, Biogen-IDEC, General Motors, and
Merck. In addition to the corporate scorecard, the articles also include
interesting reviews of ongoing research projects at IBM, Intel and Bell
Labs. |
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New Data on Women Entrepreneurs
The last decade has
witnessed a boom in entrepreneurship among women, and a new report from
the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) Office of Advocacy further
confirms these trends. Assessing self-employment rates among women, SBA
economist Ying Lowrey finds that, between 1985 and 2000, self-employment
among women grew at a much faster rate than among men. This faster
growth occurred in terms of the number of firms, as well as in net
income and gross receipts. Overall, sole proprietorships account for 73%
of total US firms (in 1997); more than half of these sole
proprietorships are operated part-time by “moonlighters.” Sole
proprietorships tend to be concentrated in larger states. Ten states
account for 55% of all sole proprietorships with Florida hosting the
most such businesses. |
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New Business Starts in Britain
We’ve recently been covering
a number of new program announcements from Great Britain. Something
seems to be working over there as the latest data on small business in
the UK show some very promising results. The Small Business Service’s (SBS)
review of 2004 statistics on small business shows that Great Britain had
4.3 million small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) at the start of
2004. That figure represents a jump from 2003’s total of 4 million, and
is the biggest increase in nine years. These firms account for 58.5% of
employment and 51.3% of turnover in the UK. |
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In mid-August, the US
Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS, formerly the INS) announced
that its quota of 65,000 FY 2006 H1B visas has already been filled. In
other words, no more applications will be permitted nearly two months
prior to the actual start of the fiscal year on October 1, 2005. This
cut-off date is the earliest that the program has ever been closed.
Program advocates argue that this early cut-off indicates that more H1B
visas (temporary work permits for highly skilled foreign workers) are
needed—especially at a time when many key technology sectors are
growing. Many supporters of American entrepreneurs and technology
companies plan to press Congress to authorize additional visas. They
argue that skilled foreign workers are a critical component in the
development and commercialization of new technologies. |
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