By all measures 2012 has been a year of opportunity and challenge, both abroad and on our shores. It was a year that brought with it many important issues: uncertainty in the world economy, volatility in financial markets, unrest in multiple areas of the world, a much anticipated election cycle here in the United States, and a potential fiscal cliff that remains daunting for many business owners and entrepreneurs.
For the National Women’s Business Council (NWBC), this environment was one from which to learn, and in which to take a leadership role to help increase the economic participation of women entrepreneurs.
Robert Jay Dilger and Sean Lowry of the Congressional Research Service examine the current state of SBA veteran loan programs, and consider whether, as some members of Congress have suggested, combining the program with other services would increase government efficiency.
President Obama’s plan for supporting small and micro-businesses as they create jobs and drive innovation.
Robert Fairlie of the Small Business Administration looks at how immigrant-owned businesses shape the economy.
This report for the CFED looks at the Bank On programs that first emerged in San Francisco and have since moved piecemeal across the country.
The SBA’s office of advocacy reports on veteran-owned businesses and micro-businesses and entrepreneurship within the veteran community.
A three-part forum from the Small Business Majority on how to best implement the Small Business Health Options Program Exchange.
Many states offer subsidies to businesses operating within their borders, but many programs do not require any job creation, or mandate a minimum level of job quality to receive the subsidy. Good Jobs First reports.
24 low-cost, politically viable state policy ideas from the Corporation for Enterprise Development to increase financial security and opportunity in tough fiscal times.
This study examines the creation and configuration of infrastructure for entrepreneurship. Using the case of nanotechnology’s emergence, I show how the three elements of infrastructure, public resource endowments, institutional arrangements, and proprietary functions, are generated by a common set of actors, simultaneously, leading to boundary obfuscation and competition. Entrepreneurs did not wait until a critical mass of infrastructure accumulated but started firms despite the lack of infrastructure. The earliest entrepreneurs endured a trifecta of burdens: their liability of newness, nascent market uncertainty, and ambiguity in the emergence of the technology itself. In exchange, early entrepreneurs were part of the infrastructure creation and configuration process. Additionally, I find that infrastructure is not measured by the number of resources within an element or the efficacy. Infrastructure configures because of interactions between elements, in the space between the actors and elements where boundaries blur.