President Obama Promotes Entrepreneurship

In case you missed it, here is President Obama in the State of the Union speech last night, underscoring the important role of entrepreneurs:

It means we should support everyone who’s willing to work, and every risk-taker and entrepreneur who aspires to become the next Steve Jobs. After all, innovation is what America has always been about. Most new jobs are created in start-ups and small businesses. So let’s pass an agenda that helps them succeed. Tear down regulations that prevent aspiring entrepreneurs from getting the financing to grow.

This may have been a reference to the Startup Act, versions of which have been introduced in both the House and Senate. Even so, any mention by the president of the vital role that new companies play in economic growth is noteworthy, especially because, as many claim, public celebration of entrepreneurs is an important cultural attribute.

Comments

[Keith Terranova]

Keen observation. Unfortunately, President Obama also harkened back to a period in history that preferred big business more than entrepreneurs: “At the end of World War II, when another generation of heroes returned home from combat, they built the strongest economy and middle class the world has ever known.”
This nostalgia was well documented by Senior scholar Brink Lindsey in the June, 2009 issue of Reason magazine (http://reason.com/archives/2009/05/26/nostalgianomics/singlepage).

[Campusentrepreneurship.wordpress.com]

Yes, but how does supporting the next Steve Jobs work when he floated a policy to tax those who build products abroad -- Apple builds just about everything abroad -- see the recent news coverage of this in the NY Times. (below)

The "be the next Steve Jobs idea" doesn't make sense with the entirety of the speech.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/business/apple-america-and-a-squeezed-middle-class.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha25

Great comment Keith!

[Dane Stangler]

Good catch, Keith. I heartily agree with Brink's terrific paper. But entrepreneurship wasn't dead in that period. On a per capita basis, in fact, firm formation in the 1940s and 1950s was the same level as today. And the 1960s saw more future Fortune 500 companies founded than in all but three other decades in the last 150 years.

[Dane Stangler]

Also a good point, Campusentrepreneurship, and that NYT story was excellent. But remember that the story also noted that Apple manufactured products in the United States for 25 years before moving more offshore.