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.
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 U.S. is home to more than 28.4 million small businesses (less than 500 employees), employing over 56 million workers (approximately half of the nation’s workforce), according to a recently released a report entitled Small Business Profiles for the States and Territories, an annual analysis of each state’s small businesses.
In a report released by the Commission on Entrepreneurship and Middle-Class Jobs at this year’s Milstein Symposium, a convening held at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center dedicated to restoring the American Dream, the authors deliberate the significant barriers to American entrepreneurship and postulate potential policy recommendations. Ultimately, the authors propose five ideas that they believe would help rebuild the American dream by promoting entrepreneurship:
Pennsylvania’s largest universities by student population, Penn State and Temple University, both announced plans this week to make a concerted investment in their respective innovation ecosystems. Pennsylvania State University (PSU) President Eric Barron announced $30 million in new investments for economic development and student career students, while Temple University and Ben Franklin Partners of Southeastern Pennsylvania established a new startup accelerator to assist university ventures.
The U.S.s entrepreneurial culture, long celebrated as a key element in the country’s economic success, is being threatened by several long-term trends, according to a paper from the Brookings Institution’s Robert Litan and Ian Hathaway. Over the past 30 years, U.S. business starts have slid downward, with many experts and policymakers offering their own explanations for the trend. Litan and Hathaway examine the data and note two possible causes: regional population decline and business consolidation.
In two recent academic journal articles from the United Kingdom (UK), the authors look at the characteristics that lead to successful entrepreneurs and startup firms. In both articles, the founders’ business experience – both corporate and entrepreneurial – was a strong indicator of startup success, sustainability, and job creation.
“People ages 20 to 34 created 22.7 percent of all new companies in last year [2013], down from 34.8 percent in 1996,” according to an article from Walter Hamilton of the LA Times. In the article, Hamilton contends that the “image of the U.S.
As a wave of new freshmen begins to enter the halls of college campuses, a new trend is emerging – students staying. While the idea of students staying an extra year or two might make some parents cringe, in reality, college towns have proven to be an ideal environment not just for young people, but for young companies as well.
Within the past few months, several indices have been released that attempt to rank states based on their entrepreneurial activity. From the perspective of economic development agencies, these indices are particularly helpful in assessing where each state stands according to the numerous ways to measure entrepreneurship. These indices, however, should be taken with a grain of salt; issues can arise when too much importance is placed on these lists for the sake of competition or the need for press.