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April 2 - 8, 2007

A State Guide to Regulatory Reform

The Small Business Administration’s Office of Advocacy has been working for years to encourage state legislatures to introduce regulatory flexibility bills based on its own model legislation first developed in 2002. Nineteen states have passed such legislation, and many others are reviewing such plans. Along the way, the SBA team has learned a lot, and they have published those lessons learned in a new guide. The report offers hands-on guidance for how to implement regulatory flexibility legislation and includes chapters on measuring regulatory impacts on small business, communicating with key stakeholders, and introducing transparency into state rule-making procedures and processes. The report includes lots of case studies and sample reports, checklists, and other tools.

The report was released during a conference at the Kauffman Foundation in Kansas City. Building a Better Small Business Climate: State Regulatory Flexibility Best Practices offered federal and state policymakers the chance to discuss the guide and share their experiences. Participants expressed a wide range of concerns, including: the need for Plain Language initiatives, the need for constant training due to turnover within state agencies, and the need for stronger authority and adequate funding. NDE's Jonathan Ortmans wrapped up the conference, urging all participants to continue working to change the culture within their own states and to make the case that fostering entrepreneurship is the most effective way to spur economic growth.

Download the March 2007 US Small Business Administration Office of Advocacy report, State Guide to Regulatory Flexibility for Small Business.

Angel Investing Continues Steady Growth

The University of New Hampshire’s Center for Venture Research has tallied up the numbers on angel investing in 2006, and the news continues to be good. Organized angel investors invested $25.6 billion in 2006—a 10.8% over 2005. Overall, 234,000 angels backed 51,000 different firms last year. Both deal numbers (up 3%) and average deal size (up 7.5%) grew, thus offering further indications of a healthy angel market. Health care and medical devices are the top sector backed by angels, accounting for 21% of total investments. Other hot sectors include software and biotechnology. While most of the news is good, the Center’s director, Jeffrey Sohl, does point to one potential warning sign. The market still includes a large proportion of “latent angels,” i.e. individuals with sufficient net worth who have not yet made an angel investment. If the angel market hopes to continue its recent steady growth, more of these latent angels must move into the active investing category.

Learn more about the University of New Hampshire Center for Venture Research report, 2006 Angel Market Analysis.

The Power of Human Capital in our Nation’s Capital

The region surrounding Washington DC has the nation’s largest concentration of knowledge workers and compares favorably to other major metropolitan areas, according to new report from the Greater Washington Initiative. The study compares Washington to five other major US metro areas, and finds that the nation’s capital enjoys a number of strong comparative advantages. Overall, Washington has 1.1 million knowledge workers concentrated in key sectors such as research science, education, and health care. Washington also enjoys a strong competitive advantage in professional services, a field expected to continue rapid growth over the next decade. Why care about knowledge workers? They drive future innovations, but they also bring great prosperity to a region as knowledge-based jobs often pay very well. In the greater Washington area, the median household income for a knowledge worker is nearly $75,000.

View the Executive Summary of the 2007 Greater Washington Initiative report, Human Capital: Greater Washington’s Knowledge Workers. The full report is available for purchase.

A Green-Tech Innovation Agenda

In order to realize groundbreaking innovations in sustainable energy technologies, more must be done to engage entrepreneurs in the process. That is one of the conclusions to be found in Green Technologies, an innovation agenda from TechNet, a technology-industry advocacy group. TechNet convened a Green Technologies Task Force to examine how to make the shift from an economy centered on oil to an economy that uses a mix of alternative fuels and new technologies. Making this transition will require a new set of public policies that is friendlier to investment and innovation in alternative energy technologies. The TechNet Task Force makes a number of recommendations including a major increase in spending on alternative energy R&D, targeted tax incentives, a market-based greenhouse gas emissions control regime, and federal and state renewable energy guidelines and rules that are technology-neutral.

Access the March 2007 TechNet report: Green Technologies: An Innovation Agenda for America.

Entrepreneurial Solutions to (Seemingly) Insoluble Problems

While TechNet focuses on innovations in energy technologies, another group is casting their nets wider. At the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship in Oxford last week, SustainAbility Inc. released a new report, Growing Opportunity: Entrepreneurial Solutions to Insoluble Problems, looking at ways to enable solutions for a range of socio-economic challenges, including the risk of global pandemics, climate change and the persistent problems of poverty and hunger. The report contends that partnerships between established businesses and entrepreneurs have the potential to make a positive impact for all. By working together, entrepreneurs can more quickly bring their programs to scale while established companies can tap into new markets and opportunities opened up by those who are much less risk averse. The survey results, included in the report, demonstrate that the impact such partnerships can have is much greater than the impact of the organizations on their own and can lead both to stronger businesses as well as positive socio-economic changes.

Access a copy of the report, Growing Opportunity: Entrepreneurial Solutions to Insoluble Problems

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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All stories © 2007 The Public Forum Institute
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