The Job Leak in America

The message I put forth over and over is simple: Innovation and entrepreneurship are the keys to a growing economy or individual business.  This is especially true during a recession and tepid recovery period which he have been in the past four and a half years. 

The study "Starting Smaller; Staying Smaller: America's Slow Leak in Job Creation" by the Kauffman Foundation suggests that the country faces a fundamental employment challenge that pre-dates the recession by many years.  This is a long-term trend that the researchers call a slow jobs "leak."

New businesses continue to generate most of the economy's net job gains.  A "job leak" occurs when new firms start up with fewer workers than historic norms, and add fewer workers as they grow.
 
I am surprised The Republican presidential candidates  have not been on top of this!  This is another indictment of the failed policies of the past two administrations--Bush and Obama--both have presided over "job leak."

Analysis of government data shows that since the middle of the last decade and perhaps longer, the growth path and survival rate of new businesses means they are generating fewer and fewer new jobs. The cohort of new firms that started in 2009, for example, is on course to contribute one million fewer jobs in the next decade than historical averages would suggest. 

• Starting Smaller; Staying Smaller: America's Slow Leak in Job Creation (Kauffman)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

Innovation and Entrepreneurship Defined

Periodically, I like to share the basic definitions of what this blog is about.  New people come to read, and somewhere buried in the archives are the basics.  I always believe that in anything we do in life, success always come as a result of mastering the basics. 

Joseph Schumpeter coined the term “creative destruction” to describe the process by which innovation causes a free market economy to evolve.  Creative destruction occurs when innovations make long-standing arrangements obsolete, freeing resources to be employed elsewhere, leading to greater economic efficiency. 

An entrepreneur is someone who organizes, manages, and assumes the risks of a business or enterprise. An entrepreneur is an agent of change. Entrepreneurship is the process of discovering new ways of combining resources.

Teaching Kids Financial Fitness

One of the gaping holes in the education system is the life skill of personal finance.  Here is a great way to teach kids about money!  Centsables

Starting a Startup Business

Where I live, February is the worst weather month of the year.  We spend a lot of time inside and travel as little as possible.  February is a good month to read and think.  

Today is "Startup Monday," so let's read and think about it! 

• How to Start a Startup by Paul Graham
• Startup Tools collected by Steve Blank
• Interview with Emmet Gowin by John Caponigro
• Jessica Livingston: What Stops Female Founders?
• Dennis Crowley: Top Five pieces of Advice for Entrepreneurs
• Max Levchin: Greatest of Max Levchin's Lessons Learned as a Young Entrepreneur
  
  (Entrepreneurial Design)
  

Will Manufacturing Make a Comeback?

One of the fundamental premises of "What's New America" is that innovation and entrepreneurship are drivers of economic recovery and expansion.  As America continues its recovery from the Great Recession, more and more economists are theorizing that the rising cost of doing business in China and election year politics are bringing manufacturing home from overseas. 

Along these lines, MIT researchers are conducting a two-year Institute-wide research project called Production in the Innovation Economy (PIE) focusing on renewing American manufacturing. The central thesis of this study is the United States still produces a great deal of promising basic research and technological innovation that needs to be translated into economic growth and new jobs.

• Production in The Innovation Economy (MIT)

Oil Pipeline and Keystone

As the debate about the Keystone pipeline continues, I found this a cool set of information.

Get Over the Hump: Leadership To Come Out of Recession

In The USA, we often refer to Wednesday as "Hump Day," the mid point of the week which once this day is over, it's only two more days till the weekend!  

The economic recovery we are in cannot seem to get over the hump.  Maybe where you work cannot seem to get over the hump and breakthrough.  Today is devoted to getting over the hump. 

• The Bad Workplace Hump: Toxic Versus Cooperative Behaviors At Work (International Journal of Leadership Studies )
• Innovating in Recessionary Times (Monitor Innovation)
• The Bad Economy Hump (Milken Institute)

Measuring Innovation, Davos, New in High Tech--It's Tech Tuesday!

Today is Tech Tuesday where we begin our day with a focus on the technology sector.  

The competitiveness of companies today is highly dependent on the ability to be innovative, i.e. constantly exceeding customer expectations, and challenging competitors. 

• Measuring For Innovation: A Guide For Teams (Innovation Management). 
• Insight from Davos: How Global Thought Leaders Talk About Innovation.  (Forbes)
• What's New in High Tech? Where are venture capitalists placing their bets on innovation and entrepreneurship?  **Note: Audio takes 27 seconds to begin in the video below...
  
  
  
  
  
  

Weekend: Personal Focus--8 Nations of Innovation

Rick Warren is a spiritual leader, author, and philanthropist.  This is a great TED talk on how to innovate your own life. 

The Role Of Innovation in Competitiveness

We now live in an innovation economy in America.  As Dean DiBiase says, When old solutions are applied to new challenges, the results are never good. 

While America cannot rely on its old place in the world, innovation keeps us moving ahead of the rest of the world!  Innovation is a word that many today believe is hard to define.  It seems it is akin to Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart who said he couldn't define pornography but would "know it when I see it."

Here is one definition of innovation to help you know it when you see it:

1. 1  The introduction of a good (product), which is new to consumers, or one of higher quality than was available in the past;
2. 2  Methods of production, which are new to a particular branch of industry. These are not necessarily based on new scientific discoveries and may have, for example, already been used in other industrial sectors;
3. 3  The opening of new markets;
4. 4  The use of new sources of supply;
5. 5  New forms of competition, that leads to the restructuring of an industry.
   

Michael Porter of Harvard, one of my favorites on competition and innovation, defined innovation well:

0. to include both improvements in technology and better methods or ways of doing things. It can be manifested in product changes, process changes, new approaches to marketing, new forms of distribution, and new concepts of scope . . . [innovation] results as much from organizational learning as from formal R&D.
   

What I am reading about innovation today:

• Edison's Approach to Goals (Innovation Excellence)
• What Does Innovation Really Mean (Bloomberg Business Week)
• The Role Of Innovation
• Watched Michael Porter's great talk given in Saudi Arabia, "Innovation and Competitiveness."