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Week of October 31 - November 4, 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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Cross-Atlantic Webcast to Address Global Impact of Entrepreneurship
The Cambridge-MIT Institute
– a joint venture between two universities separated by 3,000 miles of
ocean – is webcasting its next CMI Distinguished Lecture, To Boldly
Go: Entrepreneurship in the 21st Century. Discussing the importance
of entrepreneurship to the global economy will be Carl Schramm of the
Kauffman Foundation and Doug Richard, a serial entrepreneur and star of
the hit BBC series, Dragons’ Den. Schramm, speaking from the campus of
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is expected to share insights
from his forthcoming book ‘The Entrepreneurial Imperative’ – in which he
argues that by sharing the unique American experience of
entrepreneurship with the world, the US can foster greater democracy and
freedom. Richard, speaking from the University of Cambridge in the UK,
will identify barriers to enterprise and compare the entrepreneurial
climate in the UK to that in the US. |
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Help for New Orleans’ Entrepreneurs
As New Orleans and other
Gulf Coast communities continue to recover, we’re starting to see more
good news. The latest comes from Idea Village, New Orleans’ only
non-profit support network for entrepreneurs. Created in 2002, Idea
Village was beginning to generate lots of interesting activity when
Hurricane Katrina struck. While the hurricane hit Idea Village hard, the
network was not down for long. They’re back and ready to help the
region’s entrepreneurs get back in business. Like most entrepreneurs,
Idea Village and its members will primarily rely on bootstrapping their
way back to economic health. But, they are also actively seeking out
national partners through a newly created Entrepreneur Assistance and
Resource Network (EARN). Through EARN, New Orleans-based businesses can
fill out a quick on-line survey and then be quickly (within 48 hours)
provided with a team of experts and consultants to address their most
pressing business challenges. Idea Village is seeking out national
partners to help support this effort, and they are already building a
strong team. For example, Standard Coffee has agreed to donate a portion
of sales to fund this initiative. Efforts like these will be critical to
rebuilding New Orleans’ entrepreneurial economy. |
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Deloitte & Touche USA has
just released the 2005 edition of its Fast 500 awards that recognize the
fastest growing technology companies in North America. This year’s No. 1
hails from San Diego, California. NuVasive, a medical device
manufacturer producing back surgery products, has grown revenues by an
astounding 73,752 percent since 2000. Lots of interesting trends emerge
from this list. The Western US (especially California) continues to
dominate the list, accounting for the most companies (139) with the
highest combined average growth rate (3,137 percent). Canada is home to
10% of this year’s list. Hot sectors include software (187 companies),
followed by biotechnology, communications and networking, and Internet
technology firms. Semiconductor firms grew at the fastest rate, with
revenue growing at an average of 4,302 percent. A slight majority (53%)
of Fast 500 firms are publicly traded, and the list also contains eleven
firms with annual revenues exceeding $1 billion. |
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The Fast 500 and their
compatriots shouldn’t have trouble raising money if new data on the US
venture capital industry are any indication. The latest data from
Thomson Venture Economics and the National Venture Capital Association
are quite positive, showing that venture capital firms are doing a
booming business in terms of raising new funds. In the 3rd quarter of
2005, venture funds raised a total of $5.4 billion while buyout and
mezzanine funds raised $16.8 billion. These figures are a slight drop
from the 2nd quarter, but, overall, 2005 has been a very good year.
Total dollars raised in 2005 already exceed the amounts raised in 2004,
and experts predict that anywhere from $50-75 billion could be invested
in funds this year. Most of these dollars continue to flow to buyout and
mezzanine funds. In fact, these later stage funds are now receiving
three dollars for every dollar invested in traditional venture funds.
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A Glimpse at Corporate R&D Strategies
The history of technology
development is littered with good ideas, like the computer mouse or GUI
computer interface, that large corporations failed to commercialize
because they failed to identify a new market opportunity. Economic
researchers can identify numerous occasions where large firms fail to
develop innovations that fall outside of their core competencies. A new
study sponsored by the National Institute of Standards and Technology
finds that large firms may fail at developing radical innovations in
their core markets, too. The key concept here is “radical innovation.”
Firms fail to embrace “in-core” radical innovation for a variety of
institutional reasons, such as a flawed business model or a fear that
the new innovations will compete with existing products and services.
The authors note that this failure to develop “in-core” innovations not
only hurts the corporate bottom-line; it can also have broader effects
on overall economic competitiveness. They suggest that government
support could assist firms in the development of more effective
alliances for the exploitation of these radical innovations. |
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Many American states
regularly fret about the “brain drain” of their talented youth to the
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