This important book enhances understanding of entrepreneurial dynamics, providing the first analysis of changes in US entrepreneurial activity. Based on the unprecedented Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics, it examines adult participation in new firm creation and differences in regional firm creation activity. Shedding light on the importance of new firms for job growth, productivity enhancements, innovation, and routes for social mobility, the author tracks the success or failure of entrepreneurs, including comparisons of different groups, such as women and minorities, as well as across countries.
The book presents, chapter-by-chapter, evidence for and possible solutions to many of the most evident obstacles to entrepreneurs. It seeks to demonstrate that policy changes can have a significant effect on entrepreneurship in America by reducing barriers that block business creation.
List of Tables and Figures; List of Acronyms; Acknowledgements; Introduction: Thinking Big Again; Chapter 1: From Crisis Ideology to the Division of Innovative Labour; Chapter 2: Technology, Innovation and Growth; Chapter 3: Risk-Taking State: From 'De-risking' to 'Bring It On!'; Chapter 4: The US Entrepreneurial State; Chapter 5: The State behind the iPhone; Chapter 6: Pushing vs. Nudging the Green Industrial Revolution; Chapter 7: Wind and Solar Power: Government Success Stories and Technology in Crisis; Chapter 8: Risks and Rewards: From Rotten Apples to Symbiotic Ecosystems; Chapter 9: So.
Joblessness is the root cause of the global unrest threatening American security. Fostering entrepreneurship is the remedy. The combined weight of American diplomacy and military power cannot end unrest and extremism in the Middle East and other troubled regions of the world, Steven Koltai argues. Koltai says an alternative approach would work: investing in entrepreneurship and reaping the benefits of the jobs created through entrepreneurial startups. From 9/11 and the Arab Spring to the self-proclaimed Islamic caliphate, instability and terror breed where young people cannot find jobs. Koltai marshals evidence to show that joblessness—not religious or cultural conflict—is the root cause of the unrest that vexes American foreign policy and threatens international security. Drawing on Koltai’s stint as senior adviser for Entrepreneurship in Secretary Hillary Clinton’s State Department, and his thirty-year career as a successful entrepreneur and business executive, Peace through Entrepreneurship argues for the significant elevation of entrepreneurship in the service of foreign policy; not rural microfinance or mercantile trading but the scalable stuff of Silicon Valley and Sam Walton, generating the vast majority of new jobs in economies large and small. Peace through Entrepreneurship offers a nonmilitary, long-term solution at a time of disillusionment with Washington’s “big development” approach to unstable and underdeveloped parts of the world—and when the new normal is fear of terrorist attacks against Western targets, beheadings in Syria, and jihad. Extremism will not be resolved by a war on terror. The answer, Koltai shows, is stimulating entrepreneurial economic opportunities for the virtually limitless supply of desperate, unemployed young men and women leading lives of endless economic frustration.
With a focus on a diverse group of Latino entrepreneurs in the Houston area, Valdez explores how class, gender, race, and ethnicity shape Latino entrepreneurs' capacity to succeed in business in the United States.
In this wide-ranging study Stephen Foster explores Puritanism in England and America from its roots in the Elizabethan era to the end of the seventeenth century. Focusing on Puritanism as a cultural and political phenomenon as well as a religious movement, Foster addresses parallel developments on both sides of the Atlantic and firmly embeds New England Puritanism within its English context. He provides not only an elaborate critque of current interpretations of Puritan ideology but also an original and insightful portrayal of its dynamism. According to Foster, Puritanism represented a loose and incomplete alliance of progressive Protestants, lay and clerical, aristocratic and humble, who never decided whether they were the vanguard or the remnant. Indeed, in Foster's analysis, changes in New England Puritanism after the first decades of settlement did not indicate secularization and decline but instead were part of a pattern of change, conflict, and accomodation that had begun in England. He views the Puritans' own claims of declension as partisan propositions in an internal controversy as old as the Puritan movement itself. The result of these stresses and adaptations, he argues, was continued vitality in American Puritanism during the second half of the seventeenth century. Foster draws insights from a broad range of souces in England and America, including sermons, diaries, spiritual autobiographies, and colony, town, and court records. Moreover, his presentation of the history of the English and American Puritan movements in tandem brings out the fatal flaws of the former as well as the modest but essential strengths of the latter.
A Brief History of Entrepreneurship charts how the pursuit of profit by private individuals has been a prime mover in revolutionizing civilization. Entrepreneurs often butt up against processes, technologies, social conventions, and even laws. So they circumvent, innovate, and violate to obtain what they want. This creative destruction has brought about overland and overseas trade, colonization, and a host of revolutionary technologies—from caffeinated beverages to the personal computer—that have transformed society. Consulting rich archival sources, including some that have never before been translated, Carlen maps the course of human history through nine episodes when entrepreneurship reshaped our world. Highlighting the most colorful characters of each era, he discusses Mesopotamian merchants' creation of the urban market economy; Phoenician merchant-sailors intercontinental trade, which came to connect Africa, Asia, and Europe; Chinese tea traders' invention of paper money; the colonization of the Americas; and the current "flattening" of the world's economic playing field. Yet the pursuit of profit hasn't always moved us forward. From slavery to organized crime, Carlen explores how entrepreneurship can sometimes work at the expense of others. He also discusses the new entrepreneurs who, through the nascent space tourism industry, are leading humanity to a multiplanetary future. By exploring all sides of this legacy, Carlen brings much-needed detail to the role of entrepreneurship in revolutionizing civilization.
What drives innovation and entrepreneurship in India, China, and the United States? Our data-rich and evidence-based exploration of relationships among innovation, entrepreneurship, and economic growth yields theoretical models of economic growth in the context of macroeconomic factors. Because we know far too little about the key characteristics of Chinese and Indian entrepreneurs and the ways they innovate, our balanced, systematic comparison of entrepreneurship and innovation results in a new approach to looking at economic growth that can be used to model empirical data from other countries. The importance of innovation and entrepreneurship to any economy has been recognized since the pioneering work of Joseph Schumpeter. Our analysis of the major factors that affect innovation and entrepreneurship in these three parts of the world – US, China and India –provides a comprehensive view of their effects and their likely futures. Looks at elements important for innovation and entrepreneurship and compares them against each other within the three countries Places theoretical modeling of economic growth in the context of the overall macroeconomic factors Explores questions about the relationships among innovation, entrepreneurship and economic growth in China, India and the US
This research program began in 1993. The idea of developing representative samples of those active in the business creation process, now called nascent entrepreneurs, developed from the success of using regional characteristics to 1 predict variations in new firm birth rates in six countries. The initial purpose was to determine those external factors that encouraged individuals to initiate the business creation process and become, as they are now called, nascent entrepreneurs. The research procedures, mainly the critical aspects of the scre- ing procedures, were developed with the Survey Research Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin in Madison to complete the Wisconsin Entrepreneurial 2 Climate Study. Support for an initial test with a national sample was provided by the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. Richard Curtin became involved with the incorporation of the screening module as part 3 of the Survey of Consumers in October and November in 1993. The success of these efforts in providing a detailed description of the ent- preneurial process based on representative samples led to substantial interest among entrepreneurial scholars. A founding team of Nancy Carter, William Gartner, and Paul Reynolds was able to organize the Entrepreneurial Research Consortium (ERC), a collaborative network of 34 research units that shared the financial cost and sweat equity required to implement the first national project, 4 PSED I.
The cornerstone of the book is the proposed Eclectic Theory of Entrepreneurship. The goal of the Eclectic Theory is to provide a unified framework for understanding and analyzing the determinants of entrepreneurship. The Eclectic Theory of entrepreneurship integrates the different strands from relevant fields into a unifying, coherent framework.
