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Week of November 21 - 25, 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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Last week was Enterprise Week in Great Britain, and it was full of interesting events and activities around entrepreneurship. The British government—especially Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown---has become a big advocate of fostering an ‘enterprise culture’ in the UK. This was the second British Enterprise Week, and it involved more than 2,000 events to promote entrepreneurship. But, it wasn’t just about business plan competition and trade fairs. The government also announced several new initiatives, including a new enterprise summer school program for urban youth and an initiative to place winners of the national “Make Your Mark” business plan competition into internships and learning exchanges with Britain’s most successful businesses. In addition, European Union officials formally announced a new European Enterprise awards program. This initiative, modeled on the Enterprising Britain awards, will recognize Europe’s most entrepreneurial communities.
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Entrepreneurial Finance: A Global Snapshot
Which country has the best
markets for entrepreneurial finance? If you said the US, you’re wrong.
The United Kingdom (UK) tops the list, according to the latest Capital
Access Index from the Milken Institute. In this report, Milken Institute
researchers rank 121 countries on the ability of local entrepreneurs to
obtain business financing. The UK’s top ranking is attributed to its
vibrant equity market. Other high rankers (in order) include: Hong Kong,
Singapore, the US, and Sweden. Not surprisingly, African nations score
poorly, and they account for 17 of the bottom 20 positions in the
rankings. The researchers suggest that poorer performers should consider
securitization of mortgages and business loans as means to increase
capital access and promote economic growth. |
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Kauffman eVenturing targets growth-oriented entrepreneurs
A new website just launched
by the Kauffman Foundation is looking to provide entrepreneurs on the
move with timely and practical information on how to start, manage and
expand their businesses. The site will feature original content –
through exclusive articles authored by entrepreneurs – and a wealth of
the latest information on entrepreneurship aggregated and filtered from
numerous external sources. All of this information will be categorized
into six subject areas – finance, human resources, sales and marketing,
products/services, operations, and the entrepreneur (e.g. strategy,
culture, leadership). New collections of articles will be featured once
a month rotating among those subjects. The first collection is on how
entrepreneurs can successfully pitch angel investors for funding – with
everything from articulating a convincing ‘elevator pitch’ to clearly
communicating the return for investors. |
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New Venture Fund for Native Americans
Native American-owned
businesses, especially those focused on government contracts, have been
prospering in recent years. A newly created venture fund hopes to
further fuel this boom and make some money in the process. Native
American Capital is a newly created venture fund that plans to target
investment toward Native American enterprises operating in traditional
markets such as government contractors, gaming businesses, and firms
providing health care on reservations. The firm, which hopes to raise
$50 million in capital, is targeting early stage ventures seeking
investments in the range of $1 to $3 million. While the fund is just
getting started, it could, if successful, become the first equity fund
focused exclusively on business opportunities in Indian country. |
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Maine plans to make big investments to better support R&D and other
innovative activities in the state. The new 2005 Science and Technology
Action Plan for Maine lays out an ambitious program to achieve $1
billion in state R&D activity by 2010. How will they get there? Part of
the plan focuses on improving the quality of the state’s workforce and
investing in Maine’s research universities and other institutions. It
also involves an active embrace of entrepreneurship via creation of new
capital sources for emerging businesses and the development of a strong
statewide network of support and technical assistance for entrepreneurs.
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The Effects of Technology Convergence
For years, we’ve been
hearing about the coming convergence of key information technology
sectors. A new White Paper from the Information Technology Association
of America (ITAA) says that convergence is finally here, and that it
will have profound effects on business. The study focused on key
technology trends such as the emergence of always-on multi-use devices,
and the delegation of network control away from the center and toward a
network’s edges. The emergence of this next-generation internet protocol
network means is going to trigger a revolutionary boom in new products,
services, and technologies. This should trigger tremendous productivity
gains, but it will also challenge incumbent industries, such as cable,
telecommunications and information technology. These shifts will in turn
create major public policy debates over privacy, spectrum use, and
market competition. |
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Governors call for continued investment in university-based research
The everyday benefits of
university-based research go largely unnoticed by a large percentage of
the US population – but don’t count the nation’s governors among them. A
bipartisan group of 27 governors – led by Governors Mitt Romney (R-MA)
and Jennifer Granholm (D-MI) – cosigned a letter urging the President
and Congress to keep federal spending for basic science research a
national priority. Illustrating the link between research and the
national economy, the governors called attention to the fact that nearly
three-quarters of US industry patents can be directly tied to publicly
funded science. The letter was orchestrated by The Science Coalition, a
collection of more than 400 organizations dedicated to strengthening the
federal government’s investment in university-based scientific, medical,
engineering and agricultural research. |
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