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Week of March 13 - 19, 2006

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.

U.S. Tech Leadership: Tom Friedman, Craig Barrett Headline March 15 Hill Event

Ever since the dawn of the industrial revolution, American scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs have constantly pushed forward the boundaries of technology, creating whole new industries and providing products and services that vastly improve our standard of living. According to a new report by the Economic Strategy Institute, that may be about to change. America’s Technology Future at Risk: Broadband and Investment Strategies to Refire Innovation – written by ESI president Clyde Prestowitz – contends that a $55 billion and rising trade deficit in advanced technology products and falling revenues are forcing many U.S. telecom and technology companies to cut back on R&D spending. In just six years, the U.S. has slipped from first in global broadband penetration rates to sixteenth.

On March 15, columnist Thomas Friedman of the New York Times and Craig Barrett, chairman of Intel, will headline a Capitol Hill discussion with Prestowitz, Senator Jeff Bingaman, Senator Byron Dorgan, Senator Chuck Hagel, Congresswoman Anna Eshoo and Congressman George Miller. Organized by NDE, the session will highlight the findings of the report and examine the links between broadband, productivity and innovation. For more information, or to register to participate, visit www.publicforuminstitute.org/nde/2006/march/register.htm

Another Look at US Innovation Policies

Blue-ribbon panel reports on US innovation policy seem to be flying off the presses lately. The newest entrant in the market comes from the Association of American Universities (AAU). Their report, National Defense Education and Innovation Initiative: Meeting America’s Economic and Security Challenges in the 21st Century, was released as part of a program of recommendations to be implemented in time for the 50th anniversary of the 1958 National Defense Education Act. That law, enacted in the aftermath of the 1957 Sputnik scare, significantly expanded the federal government’s role in funding scientific research. The AAU report contends that a similar high-level Federal commitment is required now to prepare America for future competition and potential national security threats. The report’s recommendations echo those of previous studies such as Innovate America and Beyond the Gathering Storm. Specifically, the study recommends that: 1) the US government should increase spending on basic research and research infrastructure, 2) Universities and colleges must improve current offerings in the fields of science, technology, engineering, mathematics and foreign languages, and 3) the US government and universities should undertake a series of reforms to make it easier for foreign talent to be educated and take up residence in the US.

To access the Association of American Universities’ January 2006 report, National Defense Education and Innovation Initiative: Meeting America’s Economic and Security Challenges in the 21st Century, visit http://www.aau.edu/reports/NDEII.pdf.

Ten Cool Colleges for Entrepreneurs

Fortune Small Business (FSB) is out with an interesting list of ten cool colleges for entrepreneurs. Instead of ranking schools, FSB opted to list schools that are doing interesting and innovative things in terms of teaching entrepreneurship. The list includes: DePaul, Florida International (FIU), Harvard, Howard, Simmons College, Sitting Bull College, University of Arizona-Tucson, University of Colorado-Boulder, University of Texas-Austin, and the University of Rochester. Several of these schools (FlU, Howard, and Rochester) were winners of grants from the Kauffman Campuses initiative, sponsored by the Kauffman Foundation. Others had unique niches like Sitting Bull College’s focus on Native American entrepreneurship, Colorado’s stress on “green” entrepreneurship, and Simmons College’s focus on supporting women entrepreneurs.

The article “Ten Cool Colleges for Entrepreneurs,” by Patricia Gray, appears in the March 2, 2006 edition of Fortune Small Business and can be found on-line at:
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fsb/fsb_archive/2006/03/01/8370304/index.htm

Ben Franklin Forum on Innovation

Knowledge@Wharton, an e-newsletter published by Penn’s Wharton School of Business, contains a fascinating discussion of innovation in its latest edition. A series of articles reports on the Ben Franklin Forum on Innovation, a conference held at the Wharton School in November 2005. The event brought together senior managers from corporations, including Microsoft, Wal-Mart, Google, Toyota, and Nokia, identified as among the world’s most innovative. The topic -- What is innovation? How do you stimulate and manage it? And how do you measure it? While the participants were understandably unable to answer these thorny questions, they did offer insights on how big corporate players view innovation. The newsletter contains summaries from major presentations as well as excerpts from the new book, Making Innovation Work, by Tony Davila, Marc J. Epstein, and Robert Shelton. Their book argues that innovation does not derive solely from technological change, but instead emerges when high-performing companies leverage a new business model and technological change. This combination creates a powerful, and profitable, wave of innovation.

To read the Knowledge@Wharton special report on the 2005 Ben Franklin Forum on Innovation, visit http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/index.cfm?fa=SpecialSection&specialId=48

Advancing Innovation Focus of BIO 2006 Forum

An opening day session at this year’s BIO conference will take a close look at the innovative programs that provide resources and assistance to accelerate translational research and/or commercialization of university discoveries. “Innovative Solutions for Translational Research” –will get started with a roundtable discussion – moderated by Lesa Mitchell of the Kauffman Foundation – featuring disease advocacy organizations that are funding translational disease research. Also included in the session are panels on internal and external university models and a roundtable on National Institutes of Health programs to accelerate translational research. Each discussion will focus on the decision-making process that fostered the development of these programs and will address issues such as factors leading to the creation and design of the enterprise; solutions for overcoming barriers to the process, handling of IP and revenue sharing and other issues.

“Innovative Solutions for Translational Research” is being sponsored by the Kauffman Foundation and requires registration for the BIO conference. BIO 2006 will be held in Chicago from April 9 – 12. For more information, visit www.bio.org/events/2006. 

Innovation among Small and Medium-Sized Manufacturers

If you simply scanned the business headlines over the past few years, you’d think that every American manufacturing job and company has already moved over to China or India. The reality is more complicated. While small and medium-sized manufacturing firms do face competitive challenges, many of them are thriving and effectively competing in key markets. A new report from the Manufacturing Institute takes a look at the prospects for these manufacturers. While the individual firms are small, their economic impact is big. Small (less than 500 employees) and medium (less than 2500 workers) manufacturers employ eight million people (60% of all manufacturing employment) and account for 40% of the total value of US production. The report includes a list of policy recommendations as well as fifteen “best practices” that characterize world-class manufacturers. This list includes a wide range of ideas such as including a majority of outsiders on the board of directors, aggressive development of export markets, and investing at least three percent of payroll in employee training programs.

To view the March 2006 Report from the Manufacturing Institute, the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), and RSM McGladrey, Inc, The Future Success of Small and Medium Manufacturers: Challenges and Policy Issues, visit http://www.nam.org/SMMReport

Promoting Research in Entrepreneurship

A new online community for entrepreneurship research from all academic disciplines is coming together thanks to the Kauffman Foundation and the Social Science Research Network. The Entrepreneurship Research and Policy Network -- http://www.ssrn.com/update/erpn/ -- will include research from Harvard Business School Entrepreneurial Management Unit and Now Publishers' Foundation and Trends - Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Technological Change. The new network joins a list of cross-disciplinary communities hosted by SSRN. Under the leadership of Robert Litan, vice president for research and policy at the Kauffman Foundation, ERPN subscriptions will be free to U.S. universities and not-for-profit institutions for the first year. Currently, more than 320 schools, university departments and organizations subscribe – for a complete list, or to learn how to become a subscriber, visit http://www.ssrn.com/SiteLic_orgSubscribers.cfm?netid=810024. 

Survey of California’s Small Business Owners

The cost of workers’ compensation and health care benefits rank as major problem areas for small business owners in California, according to the latest annual small business survey from Union Bank of California. The bank has been surveying the state’s small business owners for six years, and this year’s survey collects the views of nearly 2,000 small business owners across California. This year’s survey marks a disturbing milestone. For the first time in the survey’s history, a majority of California’s business owners (52%) report that they do not provide health benefits to their employees. Fewer firms are offering retirement benefits, too. Seventy-five percent of surveyed business owners do not offer retirement plans such as a 401K plan --- this figure is a 6% drop from the 2004 level. In terms of good news, a plurality of business owners note that California’s opportunities for growth are the best reason for doing business in the state. They seem to be acting on this optimism as nearly 36% expect to increase hiring and 42% expect to make capital investments in 2006.

To view a press release regarding the 2006 Union Bank of California Small Business Survey, visit https://www.uboc.com/about/main/0,3250,2485_11256_703029729,00.html.

National Dialogue on Entrepreneurship
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All stories © 2006 The Public Forum Institute
Content from this newsletter may be reproduced for non-commercial purposes with proper attribution to the National Dialogue on Entrepreneurship and a link to www.publicforuminstitute.org/nde. 

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