Voices of:

Thom Ruhe, Host

Wendy Guillies, Vice President of Communications for the Kauffman Foundation

Cameron Cushman, special assistant in the Market Access & Compliance office of the International Trade Administration.

Script:

Thom: (intro)……. Wendy, let’s start with a little bit of background information on the Kauffman Foundation.

Wendy: The Kauffman Foundation is the largest private organization in America that focuses on entrepreneurship.  And when I say that, I mean all aspects of entrepreneurship.  We obviously want to help entrepreneurs start and grow successful companies, but we also take it way back to young people.  And we try to open up their eyes to the possibilities of owning their own business someday. We look at doing a lot of research so we can better understand the phenomena of entrepreneurship.  We try to inform policy ... policy makers about what programs and policies will help entrepreneurs succeed. 

Thom: Wendy, can you tell me a little bit more about the joint venture between the Kauffman Foundation and the International Trade Administration (ITA)?

Wendy: We at Kauffman are thrilled, because we think this is a unique, exciting public private partnership.  I don't know that something like this has been done before.  And we feel like we're each bringing unique strength to the table.  At Kauffman, we feel like entrepreneurship is our signature kind of area of expertise. And obviously, the International Trade Administration of the Department of Commerce brings a credibility of that entity, and they also have a terrific international distribution.  And so I think it's a great partnership, and I hope that we can do great things with it.

Thom: Cameron, can you tell me a little bit more about the market access and compliance office of the ITA?

Cameron: Well, our goal here in the ITA is to promote and expand trade for US companies around the world. What we really want to do is expand those benefits by opening trading regimes around the world which we believe will lead to prosperity not only for US companies who are able to export their products and services but also those countries as well. We believe an open market can lead to prosperity.

Thom: Why should people care that the Kauffman Foundation and ITA have come together to create this online resource?

Cameron: I think because it’s going to be useful and I think once we get this, with this site, we hope to create a site that is useful, that people want to come back to, that is dynamic, regularly updated, so that they can learn about the facts of entrepreneurship, how it can help the United States economy and the economies abroad to grow, to succeed, to create wealth, to lift people out of poverty and to really esteem global growth.

Thom:  So, within this partnership what specifically are the activities you’re collaborating on?

Cameron: Two things we’re really working on. One is the website that you’re hopefully viewing now, entrepreneurship.gov, and this is the online resource center that we want to build, to spread the positive things about entrepreneurship, the success stories, the research, the policies and how they can be implemented to really help entrepreneurs and policy makers around the world. The other part of this is entrepreneurship symposia which are going to be day-long conferences that we’re going to host in overseas markets to show foreign government leaders positive micro-economic models. In addition, the symposia are going to focus on fundamentals and mechanisms, establishing, managing and growing enterprises. And they’re going to expose these host countries to the best practices that really create a fertile environment for entrepreneurship.

Thom: Who exactly are you both trying to serve with this effort?

Wendy: Well, I'm hoping that, ultimately, this resource will help and serve anyone in any part of the world who is either looking to start or grow a company, or who's looking to better understand how to nurture a more entrepreneurial economy in their country.  So that could be multiple audiences.  It could be obviously entrepreneurs, aspiring entrepreneurs or those who already have businesses, are looking to grow them.

It can be policy makers, economic development officials who are obviously paying attention to how to make their economy stronger.  It can be academics ... who are trying to teach.  It can be researchers who are trying to better understand the phenomena.  So I see it being multiple audiences, but I kind of go into the focus of starting and growing companies and helping the environment in which entrepreneurs succeed.

Cameron:  First of all we want to add a domestic component to the site because the Kauffman Foundation has so much of a domestic focus and has really focused for many years on US entrepreneurs. But obviously at the ITA we won’t have an international component so we want to be able to target international entrepreneurs so that they can come to the site to figure out some of the policies that have worked here that might be lacking in their own countries. And we also want to be able to target the foreign policy makers as well because they’re the ones that have the power and have the abilities to make the changes in their own countries and in their state, local and federal levels of government that can help these entrepreneurs do business.

Thom: So, let me back up for a second. Cameron, could you elaborate a little bit more on why it’s important  for these countries to change their policy environment?

Cameron: I think most importantly because we have noticed the way this it’s worked in our country and by having open abilities to start a business by reducing the time and money and the initial capital it takes to start a business. We have seen in our own experience that it has worked out very well. You know you talk about some of the high growth companies that have been created in Silicone Valley and some of the other entrepreneural hot spots in the country, they all succeeded for very specific reasons because of the policy environment that was created and if that policy environment doesn’t exist it restricts those entrepreneurs’ abilities to do business, to take innovations and scientific advances to market and they will never be successful. And they also don’t have the ability to recognize those rewards if they have a great idea or a great invention they can’t move it to market and can’t profit from that they’re much less likely to it in the long run, much less likely to succeed ultimately.

Thom: All right, so let’s take this conversation up to twenty thousand feet, how would you characterize the global state of entrepreneurship, if you will?  And where do you see it going and how this project is aligning to help that?

Cameron: That’s an interesting question. I think the state of entrepreneurship is definitely expanding, I think entrepreneurship is on the march. Many other countries have recognized the power of entrepreneurship and they’ve used us and other European countries as models for how they can move these policies forward. And how entrepreneurs can really create wealth, create jobs and contribute to their economy.

Thom: Wendy, your thoughts on that…

Wendy: Well, entrepreneurship is not just an American thing.  I think that's a mistake some people might think.  It is, I believe and we believe at Kauffman that the entrepreneurial spirit really rests in everybody, and it comes out at different times in some people.  Some people, it may never come out, but that I think it's there.

And I think in the world today, there's more interest than ever in entrepreneurship and starting businesses.  I think that what we're hoping is that we can help take some of the American spirit of entrepreneurship, if you will, and spread it out, because we have seen and we have heard of countries that are trying ... that have recognized that, that one way to grow their economy is to foster more entrepreneurs and more successful entrepreneurs. And so we're hoping to help those countries. I think we believe that the more successful entrepreneurs there are, the more stable and peaceful nations we're going to have.  And that's going to be better for everyone on this planet.

Thom: And why is it that creating a better environment for entrepreneurs is such a priority for the ITA?

Cameron: Well, we really feel like the job creation engine of the United States has been for many decades, and continues to be fueled by entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship. And we’ve noticed that our innovation-driven productivity increases are really the envy of the world and a lot of our trading partners have come to us to seek input on how they can invigorate their economies through some of the policies that we take for granted here in the United States that promote high growth entrepreneurs and the businesses that they create.

Thom: Wendy, anything to add to that?

Wendy: Well, I think if we look at some of the most pressing problems of the day, including our worries about the environment, our concerns over poverty ... our continuing concerns over poverty, and even just you know, the stableness of various economies ... I think that it's the innovator, the entrepreneur who starts something with virtually nothing and creates innovation, provides jobs for hundreds, if not thousands of people, and helps their community and our nation grow.

I think that the more we have of that, the better we're going to be off (sic) as a planet.

Thom: So here you have, two formidable organizations, in the Kauffman Foundation and the ITA, in essence, coming together for this very important work. You know, can you tell me what it was like getting to this point and how you got to where you are today?

Cameron: Well (laughter!!), it’s been long and tough. But we have managed to really create a great public/private partnership between a world class private sector non-government organization in the Kauffman Foundation and a government agency here at the Department of Commerce. How we got here, we realized the need for an online resource that entrepreneurs and policy makers and just interested citizens, both of the United States and foreign countries can go to, to find out about some of the secrets of entrepreneurship. You know we really believe that entrepreneurship has been sort of a secret sauce that has allowed our economy to do so well over the past few decades when the rest of the world might have been a bit more sluggish and so what we want to create is an online networking site. I think we want to create a way for entrepreneurs in foreign countries to get in touch with entrepreneurs here in the United States to share experiences, promote business opportunities and promote linkages like that. We also want it to be a one-stop shop for all resources that are out there on the subject. So when you consider the Kauffman Foundation has a vast amount of resources that deal with all passes of entrepreneurships. The United States government has a lot of resources as well when you talk about some of the programs that the State Department is working on: the US Agency of International Development, the Millennium Challenge Corp. These groups are all working together to do entrepreneural at events in foreign countries and to spread entrepreneurship but it’s never been brought under on roof before and that’s really what we hope to accomplish with this site is to create this one-stop shop for all resources on entrepreneurship.

Thom: And what was it like from your prospective, Wendy?

Wendy: It's been something that I think has been under discussion for a little over a year.  We have been discussing or had been discussing with the Department of Commerce and the other government entities, just the ideas about entrepreneurship, the power of entrepreneurship.  And through just various sources, I think over time, those discussions matured.  And it was something that the Secretary of Commerce felt very strongly about in his tenure.  And so I think it was a matter of just having the right people at the table talking about it.  The ideas were right and the timing was right.  So we're thrilled that it came to be.

We are a private foundation, and so we have a lot of freedom to innovate.  And just at Kauffman uniquely, I think our culture is very entrepreneurial.  We do a lot of experimenting.  We have a lot of ideas that we push out there, and we think fast and we move quickly. So I think that, you know, that might be a little bit culturally different than the Department of Commerce.  And so it's been interesting to have the discussions on certain ideas.

Thom: Well, I’m really glad you got through it and we made it to this point.
So, looking forward, what are your greatest hopes for outcomes on this project?

Cameron: Where I hope this initiative can be most successful is that we can point to specific policy changes that have been made where entrepreneurs in foreign governments, in foreign countries, have been empowered to make changes to the government systems that allow them to do business better, grow their companies and really create jobs. And, if as we create this wealth, it will bring people out of poverty, increase the ability for that country to do business around the world and really contribute to the global economy. And I think that is my biggest hope, is that through the website and through the foreign symposia we can point to specific policies that we helped change to make the world a better place.

Wendy: And I think that entrepreneurship is one way to get... to come to world peace.  And I think that doing something on this level, where we can build an international community is yet another way for us to spread further education and help advance entrepreneurship.  And so that's why I'm personally excited about it, because I think it's very important to the foundation and I obviously want to do things that I think are going to make our mission more successful.

Thom: (thanks for joining us today)