One of the few surveys based on the international collection of primary data on individual entrepreneurial activities, the sixteenth annual Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) report was released earlier this month at the annual GEM meeting in Monterrey, Mexico. Across 73 economies representing 72.4 percent of the world’s population and 90 percent of the world’s GDP, more than 206,000 individuals were surveyed for the 2014 report.

The Financial Solutions Lab – a $30 million, five-year initiative managed by the Center for Financial Services Innovation (CFSI) with founding partner JPMorgan Chase & Co. – released its funding competition focused on tech-enabled financial solutions for managing household budgets.

Last week, Johns Hopkins University released an action plan to cultivate and support a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship throughout the university and the Baltimore region.

The White House announced plans to host its first ever Demo Day, a new initiative to empower a variety of entrepreneurs from around the country to launch and scale innovative companies. Unlike a private-sector demo day, where investors watch and react to the pitches of entrepreneurs, the White House Demo Day, to be held this summer, will highlight success stories from entrepreneurs across the country, with an emphasis on best practices for inclusive entrepreneurship.

Over the last couple months, the San Francisco-based Uber, a mobile-app-based transportation network, announced partnerships with institutions of higher education in the Northeast. In February, Uber and Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) launched a strategic partnership that includes the launch of the Uber Advanced Technologies Center, a Pittsburgh-based research laboratory to advance Uber’s mission of bringing safe, reliable transportation to everyone, everywhere.

Throughout the United States, policymakers continuously call on entrepreneurs to be an important cog in the economic engine. One of the key barriers to entrepreneurship, however, has grown largely as a result of state policies: burdensome student loan debt.  In the United States, the total amount of student debt is estimated at $1.2 trillion, a record high, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Veolia, The Water Council, and the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation have reached an agreement to launch the emPowering Opportunities in Water (POW!) program – a two-year national competition to support entrepreneurship and economic development while fostering sustainability efforts in the field of water.

Initial public offerings (IPOs) can alleviate financing constraints and help support important activities such as operations, R&D, and expansion. Despite these perceived benefits, new research finds that the transition to public equity – and the financial windfalls that follow – prompt many of a company’s early innovators to depart the firm, which has impacts on both innovation internally and at other firms.

Entrepreneurial growth continues to rebound and is spreading to different industries and geographies, according to the 2017 Kauffman Index of Growth Entrepreneurship, yet the report also states that entrepreneurial growth “continues to be a rare phenomenon. Most firms are not growth firms.” The five metropolitan areas with the highest levels of entrepreneurship were, in order: Washington, D.C.; Austin; Columbus, Ohio; Nashville; and Atlanta, according to the report.

Two recent reports provide good news and bad news regarding innovation in America’s rural areas. Only one in six individuals living in rural areas was self-employed in 2016 — down from one in four in 1988, according to a new issue brief from the Small Business Administration (SBA). This represents a decline of nearly 20 percent over that span of time.

The third annual National Apprenticeship week will be celebrated next week, with more than 700 activities planned across the country to showcase programs, facilities and apprentices. For those still interested in participating through an open house, skills competition, or other event, there is still time to register your event.

On the heels of delaying the International Entrepreneur Rule (IER), the White House has endorsed a bill that would grade candidates for immigration. A total of 60 organizations, including SSTI and many of our member organizations, stated their opposition to the move in a new letter. It is not clear why the IER’s standard of investible businesses would not fit into the legislation’s merit-based system.

Over the last several months, economic development organizations, universities, and their partners have announced new efforts to create the building blocks for entrepreneurial development in rural communities. Examples include i2e announcing new efforts to expand entrepreneurial support services to rural communities in Oklahoma and three Indiana universities partnering to support startup growth in rural regions across the state.

Newly released research from the Kauffman Foundation finds that in 2016, Washington, D.C., Austin, San Jose, Columbus, and Nashville were the five highest ranked metropolitan areas for the Index of Growth Entrepreneurship. The five highest ranked states were Virginia, Utah, Maryland, Arizona, and Massachusetts.

When employees discover potentially significant inventions during their line of work, they can decide whether to leave their company and form a new startup around the idea, or to transfer the knowledge to the parent firm and attempt to gain financial compensation through a spinoff. As seen in the 2016 summary report from Failure Aversion Change in Europe (FACE) Entrepreneurship, the two main fears for entrepreneurs are financial security and losing a stable, professional job. Recent research also suggests that granting employees extended leaves of absence with guaranteed options for returning increases the likelihood of entrepreneurship. Coupled together, these results prompted SSTI to further review the relationship between corporate-leave policies and entrepreneurship.

Millennials internalized the effects of the most recent recession and revealed their beliefs about the economy and jobs future in a recent poll conducted by EY, a professional services company, and the Economic Innovation Group. Nearly one-third believe their community is still in a recession and 78 percent are worried about having good-paying job opportunities, according to the poll.

Because existing evidence points to the presence of broadband as having a positive connection to the economic health in rural areas, numerous states and the federal government have made increasing broadband in these places a top priority. In particular, many rural areas view broadband as an important tool in attracting entrepreneurs and other creative-class employees. Although this tactic is well intentioned, new research suggests that the association between expanded rural broadband availability and the proliferation of entrepreneurship and creative-class employees may not be as strong as one might think, and that the relationship may actually be negative.

Although much has been written on the value of immigrant entrepreneurship, relatively little research to date focuses on strategies for supporting these individuals. Welcoming America, a national nonprofit and non-partisan organization focused on immigrant inclusion, has addressed this gap by releasing a how-to-guide for those interested in supporting immigrant entrepreneurship in their cities. Produced with Global Detroit, an initiative focused on southeast Michigan’s international community, Seeds of Growth describes practical ways for regions across the nation to leverage opportunities associated with including immigrant entrepreneurs in local economic development strategies and programs.

As a way to support populations that are underrepresented in entrepreneurial activities, the Kauffman Foundation has announced $4.3 million in grants to 12 organizations that provide entrepreneurial support services to women and minorities. The awardees were selected from more than 376 applicants and range in both geography and industry-focus. They will receive awards ranging from $87,000 to $420,000 over the next two years.

This week, America remembers the 75^th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor and its entrance into World War II. Veterans of World War II have had a considerable impact on the current economy: The Bureau of Labor Statistics finds that World War II veterans had the highest rates of self-employment of any period of service.

As policymakers and economic developers grow to recognize the need to create broader opportunities for prosperity to sustain future national competitiveness, four facts reveal one of the complex and compounding factors hampering productive participation from a significant segment of our population:  

Immigrant entrepreneurs would be allowed to remain in the United States for an initial period of up to two years, and, conditional upon meeting certain benchmarks, could potentially stay in the country for one additional period of up to three years under a newly proposed rule by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) branch of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). As part of the International Entrepreneur Rule, which is now open for a 45-day comment period, certain international entrepreneurs would have an opportunity to start or scale their businesses in the United States. In an official blog post by White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Deputy Director for Technology and Innovation Tom Kalil and Assistant Director for Entrepreneurship Doug Rand, the authors note that the new reform would propose clear criteria to identify those entrepreneurs with the potential to provide significant public benefit to the United States. Evaluating entrepreneurs on a case-by-case basis, the proposed rule would consider factors such as: the entrepreneur’s ownership stake (at least 15 percent) and leadership role in the startup; the growth potential of the startup; competitive research grants of at least $100,000 from federal, state, and local government agencies provided to the firm; and the investment of at least $345,000 by qualified American investors.

Researchers of American entrepreneurship now have a timelier socio-economic portrait of the nation’s employer-owned businesses as a result of a public-private partnership between the U.S. Census Bureau, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Minority Business Development Agency, and the Kauffman Foundation.