The Entrepreneurial Imperative: How America's Economic Miracle Will Reshape the World (and Change...

The Entrepreneurial Imperative: How America's Economic Miracle Will Reshape the World (and Change Your Life) | Carl J. Schramm | Everyone Needs Basic Business Skills

books:

The Entrepreneuria...

	The Entrepreneurial Imperative: How America's Economic Miracle Will Reshape the World (and Change Your Life) Carl J. Schramm Collins, 2006 - 208 pages average customer review:based on 11 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

highly recommended

In 2004, Carl Schramm, president of the Kauffman Foundation, the world's leading foundation for entrepreneurship, published a groundbreaking essay with a radical premise: that Americans literally have no conception of the secret that truly underlies our economic success, and that for the United States to survive and continue to lead the world's economy, it is imperative we learn to understand and employ that secret.

The secret that has led the American economy to become the world's strongest? Our unparalleled skill as entrepreneurs. As Schramm compellingly shows in this sweeping manifesto, entrepreneurship alone?not anything else?can give America the necessary leverage to remain an economic superpower. Not technology, since everyone now has the same technology, or access to it. Not education?we are years behind other nations in this area. Not basic manufacturing, long since moved overseas from the United States. And not capital markets, now truly global entities.

Drawing on detailed research conducted by the Kauffman Foundation and on his decades of experience as an entrepreneur himself and as a leader and mentor to other entrepreneurs, Schramm persuasively demonstrates in detail what this entrepreneurial imperative means for the way we run universities and foundations, lead companies, make personal job decisions, and even conduct our foreign affairs. The Entrepreneurial Imperative will change not only the way our government, corporations, and nonprofits operate, but also our day-to-day lives as working Americans.

for more information click here

This is an important topic!

The book The Entrepreneurial Imperative by Carl J. Schramm is subtitled "How America's Economic Miracle Will Reshape the World and Change Your Life".

This is not a book on entrepreneurship, but rather a book on why entrepreneurship (practice of, promotion of, as foreign policy) is important to the a public policy for future USA.

Right from page one the thesis is presented directly:

For the United States to survive and continue its economic and political leadership in the world, we must see entrepreneurship as our central comparative advantage. Nothing else can give us the necessary leverage to remain an economic superpower. Nothing else will allow us to continue to enjoy our standard of living. We either support and nature increasingly entrepreneurial activities in all aspect of our society and around the globe or run the very real risk that we will become progressively irrelevant on the world stage and suffer economically at home.

In short, entrepreneurship in business and universities; in our approach to both government and foreign policy; and in our personal lives is the only answer if we hope to continue to thrive.

Aren't there other solutions?

No.

The author offers these definitions:

* Entrepreneurship is the process in which one or more people undertake economic risk to create a new organization that will exploit a new technology or innovative process the generates value to others.
* The Entrepreneur is one who undertakes personal economic risk to create a new organization that will exploit a new technology or innovative process the generates value to others.

Those definitions work for me well enough for me.

I'd like to see what candidates for President in 2008 are going to talk this up - if any.

For foreign policy, this means promoting in entrepreneurial capitalism over democracy promoting (or even business/globalization in general) .

For domestic policy, this means creating environments were entrepreneurship is rewarded, and risks are reduced (less risk = more entrepreneurial activity). What might this mean: National systems of employer independent pension and health insurance systems (not gov run), and new financing and legal mechanisms.

For schools and universities, this means entrepreneurship should be taught and practiced.

This seems like an important book to me. At under 200 pages it is a quick read.

for more information click here

Everyone Needs Basic Business Skills

As a former liberal arts major who picked up my business skills on the fly, I agree with Carl Schramm's contention that entrepreneurial skill development should become a mandatory part of the basic education here in the U.S. While it would have been nice to have learned more about business basics during high school, I think it was too easy to bypass the real world until college was in the rear-view mirror. Now, with the benefit of experience, I wish that my academic experience would have contained some rooting in the entrepreneurial spirit put forward in this book.

With ten years of business ownership now under my belt, I can see the mis-steps that could have been avoided with just a few basic teachings. While I always thought I had "the" idea, I only recently grasped how much earlier my current success could have come if I had leveraged the benefits of others' experiences. This book echoes my personal experience that the power of ideas is substantially strengthened by a collaborative network of people and institutions focused on creating something more. I now see that providing a benefit to a larger group also leads to benefits for me. From that point-of-view, I think Carl Schramm's positions are headed in the right direction.

for more information click here

Fresh insight to economic thinking

I enjoyed Carl's book. He provides fresh insight among the many economists that all think a like. Carl's insights gave me a fresh perspective on America and what is driving the new economy. I think the book is a required read for anyone managing their own investments, or thinking of a career change.

Mixing it up is a good thing

I was taken with Mr. Schramm's challenge to consider how every individual has a part to play in maintaining America's economic strength. While all of us will have different ideas about how to sustain a strong economy, it seems to me that entrepreneurial activities are keeping the innovation engine flowing while politicians and more entrenched institutional structures struggle to keep up.

I look at my own experience in a large company and see that our business could be more strategic and objective-oriented. If we are open to being more entrepreneurial, as Mr. Schramm suggests, smart and fresh ideas for growth and improvement could come from anywhere: our co-workers, our customers, our partners, our vendors.

I see the concept of American entrepreneurialism advocated here as more about providing empowerment to people to shape their own destinies. Looking around the world right now, I'd hope that anyone would agree that we could all use some of that.

for more information click here

reviews: page 1, 2, 3

products you might be interested in