Nasir Ali of the Syracuse Technology Garden passed to me an article about entrepreneurship from Newgeography. The article was entitled, Entrepreneurs Ignored in Recovery Plans, was posted on April 22. The article detailed results from a Kaufmann survey on entrepreneurship and the government. The key findings of the Kaufmann report included the following:
By a margin of three to one (63 percent to 22 percent) Americans favor business creation policies as opposed to government creating new public and private sector jobs. In fact, 79 percent of respondents say entrepreneurs are critically important to job creation, ranking higher than big business, scientists, and government.
Only 21 percent of all survey respondents say that the stimulus package supports entrepreneurial activity and 33 percent believe it will retard entrepreneurship.
While 78 percent of survey respondents say innovation is important to the health of our economy, only 3 percent say they believe the stimulus package will encourage innovation.
Americans think the government does little to encourage entrepreneurship, despite its importance; 72 percent of respondents say the government should do more to encourage individuals to start businesses. Almost half of respondents think the laws in America make it more difficult to start a business.
The article also discussed the SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research) and the STTR (Small Business Technology Transfer) programs, advocating at the conclusion of the piece that the USA should be “doubling if not tripling the investment in both of these programs. At a minimum a $5 billion SBIR program should be put in place. It will get us much more in growth than the Treasury bailouts of the banks, or General Motors. It represents both what America wants – Small Business Innovation – and needs in these times of economic stress.”
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