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Week of December 20 - December 24, 2004Welcome to the National Dialogue on Entrepreneurship, an initiative of the Public Forum Institute made possible by a grant from the Kauffman Foundation of Kansas City. Through NDE-news, we bring you short summaries and analyses of various trends driving the innovation economy. Subscribe now to receive your weekly copy. Archived issues are available online. Links to the day's entrepreneurship stories from across the nation and around the world are posted each weekday on the NDE main page - bookmark it and stay informed about the latest entrepreneurship news. |
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NDE-news is off to celebrate the holidays, so we will not be publishing next week. Look for us again in January 2005. Happy holidays! |
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National Innovation Initiative For the past year, the Council on Competitiveness has been managing a major research project, the National Innovation Initiative (NII), to examine how America can most effectively compete in today’s dramatically more connected and competitive global marketplace. The NII Final Report was released this week, and the results are both encouraging and sobering. The US remains the world’s innovation hub, but its dominance is not guaranteed. Indeed, many warning signs, such as declining immigration of skilled scientists and engineers, are emerging. The report’s basic message is that, for the past 25 years, the US economy has succeeded, through innovative management and smart investments, in optimizing itself for efficiency and quality. It must now focus on optimizing for innovation if it hopes to prosper in the next 25 years. The report contains numerous insights and important recommendations. NDE-news readers may be especially interested in its recommendations on steps to re-energize the entrepreneurial economy. Among its proposals are:
The National Innovation Initiative report, sponsored by the Council on Competitiveness, is available at www.compete.org |
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CFED Report Card The 2004 edition of the highly respected Development Report Card for the States, by the Corporation for Enterprise Development (CFED), was released last week. For 18 years, the Report Card has ranked states according to a variety of measures that assess economic performance, business vitality, and development capacity. This year’s “honor student” is Connecticut, the only state to receive an A grade in every category. Other states on the “honor roll” include: Delaware, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Oregon, and Virginia. Overall, this year’s survey finds a growing interest in entrepreneurship as well as a rise in entrepreneurial activity. Some measures that confirm these trends include:
To access the 2004 Development Report Card for the States, by the Corporation for Enterprise Development http://www.cfed.org/focus.m?parentid=34&siteid=245&id=245 |
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Deloitte Fast 500 For the past few weeks, Deloitte, the global consultancy, has been busy passing out awards to the world’s fastest growing technology companies through its Fast 500 program. On December 2nd, it honored the Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) Fast 500, and its No. 1 firm, Lastminute.com, a British on-line travel service firm. In Europe, the software business is booming as 42% of the EMEA Fast 500 operate in that sector. Great Britain hosts the largest number of EMEA Fast 500 firms, with 174 located there. On December 8th, the Fast 500 Asia Pacific was released with Australia’s Bill Express Limited, an online payment system, ranking at the top. Software is also the “hot” sector in the Asia-Pacific rankings. China hosts the most Fast 500 Asia Pacific Firms (90). Chinese and Korean firms account for 40% of the total Fast 500 list. |
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The Upside of Disorganization In the 1950s, sociologists regularly spoke of “Organization Man.” We may soon be referring to a new archetype: “Disorganization Man (or Woman).” That’s one interesting message from a new study by Demos, a London-based non-profit, and Orange, a British telecom firm. The new report,
Disorganization, by Paul Miller and Paul Skidmore, examines changes in the culture and operating style of business. It finds that today’s employees strongly desire more balance in their lives and more flexibility in the workplace. As workers seek more flexibility and creative outlets at work, older hierarchical models of business organization will become increasingly irrelevant and may actually serve as a deterrent to attracting and retaining talented employees. As the authors note, employees want to “define their work rather than have their work define their identity.” These desires are accompanied by a strong preference to work for smaller organizations with less hierarchy and bureaucracy. While change has been slow, British business leaders seem to be getting the message. Fifty-nine percent of surveyed executives noted that they planned to allow their employees to work more flexibly in the future. |
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