The U.S. must increase the access to three elements help small businesses thrive and restore U.S. competiveness, according to a new report from the Center for Public Policy Innovation (CPPI) — Restoring U.S. Competitiveness: Creating Jobs and Unleashing the Potential of Small Businesses through Technology and Innovation. The key elements include:
- Access to Capital — Gaining access to capital is an obstacle for all small businesses. However, the U.S. must work to connect local startups with regional investors to boost local investments and make the capital gains tax exemption permanent for investors in qualified small businesses.
- Access to Modern Technology — U.S. small business must have access to cloud computing, mobile technologies and virtual global supply chains to invest more into their products, to collaborate on a global scale and to expand their presence to foreign markets.
- Access to Global Markets — The U.S. government must make existing programs, that help domestic small business enter foreign markets, easier to find and navigate.
The authors contend that it is imperative that the U.S. increase access to these three elements due to our global competitors providing "effective top down policy support" for small business development.
The report also looked at the importance of failure for startup founders. Failure is a natural and important part of future successful firm development, the report notes. Startup founders learn valuable lessons when their firms fail, and they often develop an expanded professional network that will benefit them over the long-term. The authors contend that learning from mistakes is the true driver of private sector innovation.
The report was compiled using the recommendations of leaders from private industry, government and the nonprofit sectors collected during a CPPI-hosted panel discussion in December of 2011. Read the report...
Attributed to: SSTI (State Science and Technology Institute)
