SEVA-PORT Innovation Index
July 30th, 2010The SEVA-PORT (Southeast Virginia Partnership for Regional Transformation) Innovation Index is now available. This June 2010 study, produced by EntreWorks Consulting and the Center for Regional Economic Competitiveness, examines how well Southeast Virginia is doing in terms of building a strong talent pipeline of local residents with skills in science, technology, engineering and math-related skills.
If you have interest in learning more about how regions can use innovation indexes and other tools to benchmark their relative economic competitiveness, you might consider joining EntreWorks Consulting, and our partners, Growth Economics, in Philadelphia, PA, at the Fall Training Institute sponsored by the National Business Incubation Assocation. On September 15th, we’ll be running a training seminar on how to benchmark regional innovation performance. Click here for details.
The Entrepreneur Experience Lab
July 28th, 2010Regular readers of the EntreWorks newsletter and blog will know that we are huge fans of the Providence, RI-based Business Innovation Factory. BIF does lots of interesting work, but one of its core activities is the sponsorship of various “experience labs.” These labs operate as structured “experiments” where key leaders and thinkers in a given field can test out new ideas and business models. Past labs have looked at issues like the student experience, the elder experience, and green energy innovation. BIF has now announced a new lab that should excite all those with an interest in the entrepreneurial economy. The Entrepreneur Experience Lab, to be managed in cooperation with Babson College, will look at new tools and new approaches to better support entrepreneurs. This should be an exciting and hopefully path-breaking effort. We will be closely following this work, but you can also find out more at BIF’s blog.
Crowdsourcing Financial Innovation
July 23rd, 2010It’s pretty rare to find some interesting and innovative coming out of a G-20 summit, but the recent meeting in Canada did produce one interesting annoucement. The G-20 nations and Ashoka Changemakers have teamed up to create the G-2o SME Finance Challenge, a global competition to identify the best new ideas and innovations for financing small and medium-sized enterprises. Anyone can particpate and winners will be invited to present their ideas at November’s G-20 summit in Korea. If you have ideas, the competition is open until August 25th. Hopefully, some new ideas can be shared with our own SBA, which is struggling to address the current credit crunch here in the US.
To learn more about the G-20 SME Finance Challenge visit http://www.changemakers.com/SME-Finance
Self-Employment Numbers Show Decline
July 7th, 2010According to a June 24, 2010 data release from the Census Bureau, the number of nonemployer businesses (i.e. the self-employed) saw a big drop in 2008, the latest year for this data. Overall, the number of US nonemployer businesses dropped by 1.6 percent between 2007 and 2008. All states (with the exception of Texas and Washington DC) saw a decline in these numbers, with Maine, Delaware and Nevada posting the biggest declines. The housing crisis explains a lot of these results, as the data show big drops in the real estate and construction sectors.
Despite the decline, nonemployer businesses are an important part of the US economic landscape. Nationwide, there were 21.4 million nonemployer firms in 2008. While they account for a large number of firms, they make up a small part of total firm receipts (only 4%) in the US. Nonetheless, I often view these firms as part of our entrepreneurial “bench strength.” Many of these ventures can evolve into larger, faster-growing businesses. And, in many places, self-employment is an important and vital economic lifeline. Wayne County, Michigan—the home to Detroit—saw a large scale increase (Up 6.8%) in these firms. These figures can be viewed as a sign of econmic desperation or, hopefully, a sign that a new, and more entreprneuerial, community is on the rise.
A press release describing the results can be accessed here: http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/business_ownership/cb10-93.html
Ride to Prosperity in Reading and Berks County
June 18th, 2010Yesterday, I participated in a press conference timed to the release of “Ride to Prosperity: Strategies for Economic Competitiveness in Greater Reading.” This report is the culmination of an interesting initiative where eight local economic and workforce development groups have come together to jointly develop and promote a series of new economic development strategies for Berks County and the City of Reading, PA. More communities need to engage in this kind of collaborative planning and decision making.
The report has garnered a good deal of local media attention. Some links are here:
WFMZ TV-69: http://www.wfmz.com/berksnews/23937965/detail.html
The Reading Eagle: http://readingeagle.com/article.aspx?id=228546
Berks Community Television: http://www.bctv.org/special_reports/economy/article_0dbfef40-7a48-11df-8cb8-001cc4c03286.html