Kentucky Entrepreneurial Coaches Blog

2009-12-15T16:07:00.001-08:00

On Thursday December 10th, Sens. Landrieu and Snowe introduced S. 2869, the Small Business Job Creation and Access to Capital Act. This new bill contains a series of measures that were separately introduced by Sens. Landrieu and Snowe earlier this year. The Senate Small Business Committee will mark up S. 2869 next Thursday, December 17th. The bill and a section-by-section are attached for your review. Highlights of the legislation include:
Increase the loan limit on 7(a) loans from $2 million to $5 million.
Increase the loan limit on 504 loans from $1.5 million to $5.5 million.
Increase the loan limit on microloans from $35,000 to $50,000.
Allow the 504 loan program to refinance short-term commercial real estate debt into, long-term, fixed rate loans.
Extend the authorization to provide 90 percent guarantees on 7(a) loans and fee elimination for borrowers on 7(a) and 504 loans through December 31, 2010.
Direct the SBA to create a website where small businesses can identify lenders in their communities.
Increases the maximum guarantee on 7-A loans to $4.5 million
Changes the eligibility criteria to (a) a tangible net worth not to exceed $15 million and (b) the average net income after Federal Taxes over the past two full fiscal years is not more than $5,000,000.

This Bill is deserves support !

Restaurant Real Estate Opportunities

2009-05-11T07:24:00.001-07:00

The current economy is creating a lof of opportunities for restaurant growth for operators that can take advantage of the market . Rather than grow by spending the capital to build a new facility or convert a non foodservice facility into a restaurant, there are many " second generation space " opportunities which are spaces that have already been built out for a restaurant and can be acquired at a much lower investment than a new build out . Restaurant infrastructure is expensive with costs for HVAC , fire protections systems , cooler/freezer systems, etc.. Opportunities exist out there throughout Kentucky and beyond to grow your business at reduced capital investment costs .

Limestone M & A Alliance formation - self starting business stimulus

2009-03-27T18:53:00.000-07:00

Two Kentucky business intermediaries , Mr. Jay Knoblett (owner of Arlington Scott, Inc.) and Mr. Mark Sievers (owner of The Sievers Company LLC) , have formed the Limestone M&A Alliance . This alliance, which will operate as a consortium of independent companies , has been created to respond to the challenges of our economy by facilitating more and faster paced information sharing among the business community. This will accelerate main street and mid M&A market deal flow which in turn should play an economic stimulus and development role in the Bluegrass region and beyond.

The Limestone M&A Alliance http://www.limestonealliance.com/ welcomes affiliations with business/professional individuals and organizations . Their database of buyers, sellers, lenders and professional resource providers will initially focus on Kentucky but will be global in scope.

Workout plan often a better alternative to bankruptcy

2009-03-15T09:26:00.000-07:00

In the current economy there are many good solid businesses that are troubled or may become troubled later this year . This is a link to an article about how developing a workout plan can be a better alternative to filing bankruptcy :

http://www.franchisetimes.com/content/story.php?article=01246

Buzgate - Business Resorce

2009-03-06T11:37:00.000-08:00

Today I ran across this business resource some readers might find useful .

Buzgate www.buzgate.org

Cap and Trade Makes Industrial Recruitment Even Less Logical

2009-02-28T05:15:00.000-08:00

I've long been convinced that industrial recruitment, that is a strategy that tried to grow our economy by convincing a factory to locate in an industrial park, is a losing strategy, generally speaking. There just aren't too many Toyota's lining up to locate here, and the companies within the United States, well, they're already American based and why should we use our tax dollars to steal them from another community? It just makes more sense to try to grow the economy overall than to fight the tide pulling these ventures south and east, to China and Mexico.

Soon, there may be yet another reason why industrial recruitment is a losing strategy: Carbon Cap and Trade. This will be a federally imposed tax on the production of CO2 emissions. Factories utilize large amounts of electricity generated by coal and other fossil fuels. Frequently, they burn their own fuels to make energy. In a day not too far into the future, the costs of doing this will increase. When it does, the costs of manufacturing will go up. Here's how CNBC's Larry Kudlow describes it: "[The coming] cap-and-trade program will be a huge across-the-board tax increase on blue-collar workers, including unionized workers. Industrial production is plunging, but new carbon taxes will prevent production from ever recovering. While the country wants more fuel and power, cap-and-trade will deliver less."

At this point I think it will be impossible to stop the cap and trade steamroller. From my standpoint, as a practitioner of economic development, I have to take the laws as they are, not necessarily as I would want them- and I do have reservations about cap and trade. So too do communities.

This means local communities have one more reason to think beyond their industrial recruitment dogmas and realize that entrepreneurship and improving small business efficiency makes more sense than adding onto your inventory of assets for a future factory that just ain't coming.

Laid Off in 2008? Start a Business in 2009 - Entrepreneur.com

2009-02-27T05:50:00.001-08:00

Laid Off in 2008? Start a Business in 2009 - Entrepreneur.com

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Is Entrepreneurship on the Decline in America?

2009-02-24T07:25:00.000-08:00

That's what one economist is saying at US News and World Report. Snips:

[T]he population of U.S. firms is not a measure of new business creation. It is a measure of the stock of businesses in existence at any point in time. The population of businesses goes up if the number of new businesses started each year exceeds the number of existing businesses that fail each year. So we need to look at a different set of SBA numbers to figure out what happened to entrepreneurial activity over the 1997-to-2006 period.

The SBA's primary number for estimating business formation is the count of new employer firms founded in a year. The SBA reports that in 1997, 590,644 new employer businesses were started. In 2006, the agency estimates, 640,800 new employer businesses were created. That's a 7.9 percent increase over the decade.

The Census Bureau reports that in 1997, there were 272,912,000 Americans. In 2006, it estimated that the population had increased to 298,363,000 people. That's a 9.3 percent increase. Over the 10 years, the U.S. population increased faster than the rate of new employer firm formation.

Below is a graph I created of the per capita rate of employer firm formation in the United States since 1990. The trend is not good for entrepreneurship in America. Although the rate bounces around from 1990 to 2007, the per capita rate of new employer firm formation was 10 percent lower in 2007 than it was in 1990.

This bleeds over into the Gazelles vs. Mom 'n Pops argument that consumes many in the economic development arena, but it's worth considering.

Full story: http://www.usnews.com/blogs/outside-voices-small-business/2009/02/23/sba-data-show-a-declining-rate-of-entrepreneurship-in-the-us.html

The Pillars of Entrepreneurship

2009-02-24T07:19:00.000-08:00

Nice graphic from the United Nations Development Program Toolkit for Private Sector Development. (I'm having trouble viewing the entire graphic here, but if you click on it you can see the whole thing.)

Lack of VC Inhibits Caveman Inventor

2009-02-24T07:17:00.000-08:00

Now we know why it took so long to commercialize the wheel.

Tweaking Friedman

2009-02-24T07:05:00.000-08:00

This article dittos the underlying premise behind one of Tom Friedman's recent provocative ideas about technology, entrpreneurship and innovation. A snip:

Government funds for the VC industry is simply unnecessary. At $30 billion per year, there is no lack of VC capital being deployed in America. The bottleneck in the VC-entrepreneurship equation isn't in the inputs of capital, it's in the outputs. The lack of exits and the dearth of the IPO market is what needs to be fixed to open the floodgates of innovation.

But then I thought - let's not go overboard with our criticism by taking Friedman literally. The guy's a huge fan of global entrepreneurship (I loved it when he referred to the worthy work of the global non-profit, Endeavor, as the "best anti-poverty program of all"). His heart and priorities are in the right place.

So before folks get up in arms about "bailing out VCs," let's take Friedman's comments figuratively. He's dead on when he points out that entrepreneurship is what is going to get us out of this mess. The government shouldn't focus on silly notions of VC subsidies that nobody wants. Instead, the policy agenda to foster entrepreneurship and the flow of capital to entrepreneurs is very clear.

The article goes on to talk about specific policy needs for America's tech based economy. I'd tweak Friedman a little differently by saying he's right on the underlying anti-poverty idea of entrepreneurship. But we need a stronger pro-entrepreneurship in general in America, not just one focused on tech companies. And the problem is about more than the current recession, we need more entrepreneurs for entirety of the forseeable future.

It'll take entrepreneurs to replace the factories lost to globalization, to find ways to reduce our carbon footprint within the coming regulatory framework, to make coal cleaner, to find new ways to use the next wave of the web, etc. Entrepreneurship is just a new app to be used to solve a particular problem. It should be part of our DNA in America.

What's Missing from the Stimulus Talks

2009-02-06T09:46:00.000-08:00

Growth! Our economy has to grow again. How do we do it? By starting with entrepreneurial friendly policies that allow entrepreneurs freedom to hire people, tap markets, finance their companies, staff their teams, etc.

Don't take it from me. Here's Carl Schramm from the Kauffman Foundation:

We should be asking President Obama, his economic team, and Congressional leaders a basic question: How do you propose to help ensure that the United States maintains a long-term annual growth rate of 4 percent (or higher)?

We at the Kauffman Foundation have our own proposals, all of them centered on the core fact - borne out by our research - that entrepreneurship and innovation are the key growth drivers in our economy. Highly entrepreneurial companies like Google, eBay, Amazon create more than half the nation's new jobs.

Action in several areas can make America's economic ecosystem more conducive to entrepreneurial growth and should therefore be central to the country's growth agenda.

• Building a skilled workforce. Finding and attracting highly skilled, entrepreneurial workers is one of the more important challenges facing the U.S. economy. Major, entrepreneurially driven improvements are necessary throughout our educational system to help prepare skilled workers, especially in math, science, technology, and engineering - the fields that will be most relevant to generating future innovative breakthroughs.

• Welcoming high-skilled legal immigrants. One quarter of the science and technology start-ups launched in the United States between 1995 and 2005 had a foreign-born founder. These companies employed 450,000 workers and generated $52 billion in revenue in 2006. Our economy needs more, not less, of such highly motivated entrepreneurs. One way to keep them is to grant a permanent work visa to any immigrant earns a degree in science, engineering or math.

• A lower-cost health care system that encourages entrepreneurship. Continued escalation of health care costs and uncertainties about future trends rank high on virtually every American's list of concerns. In addition, the fear of losing health care deters some employees from leaving their current jobs to launch new enterprises. Health care needs to be made both less expensive and more portable.

• Keeping U.S. capital markets competitive through appropriate regulation. Sarbanes-Oxley has turned out to be substantially more costly than was expected at the time. In addition, the SOX requirements may be discouraging successful entrepreneurial firms from going public and instead to sell to larger companies, an "exit" path that may reduce the entrepreneurial energy that drove the success of these firms in the first place. In its current form, SOX is a job killer in desperate need of reform. And, this current crisis, we should heed the lesson of SOX. Let's not ram a complex new regulatory scheme through Congress in a matter of days - only find out later that it has worsened the very problem it was intended to fix.

• Strengthening trade and global markets. Companies like Intel, Microsoft, eBay, and Google would not be the giants they are today without access to global markets in which to sell their products. In addition, firms of all sizes benefit from being able to purchase supplies and services from anywhere they can be competitively sourced. Free trade has a taken a political beating in recent years. It's time for our candidates to show some courage and stand up for this vital principle.

www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/02/whats_missing_from_the_economi.html

New Growth Theory and Entrepreneurship

2009-02-06T09:42:00.000-08:00

Interesting theory... how would entrepreneurship play into this:

New Growth Theory emphasizes that economic growth results from the increasing returns associated with new knowledge. Knowledge has different properties than other economic goods (being non-rival, and partly excludable). The ability to grow the economy by increasing knowledge rather than labor or capital creates opportunities for nearly boundless growth.

Markets fail to produce enough knowledge because innovators cannot capture all of the gains associated with creating new knowledge. And because knowledge can be infinitely reused at zero marginal cost, firms who use knowledge in production can earn quasi-monopoly profits. All forms of knowledge, from big science to better ways to sew a shirt exhibit these properties and contribute to growth. Economies with widespread increasing returns are unlikely to develop along a unique equilibrium path. Development may be a process of creative destruction, with a succession of monopolistically competitive technologies and firms. Markets alone may not converge on a single most efficient solution, and technological and regional development will tend to exhibit path dependence.

History, institutions and geography all shape the development of knowledge-based economies. History matters because increasing returns generate positive feedbacks that tend to cause economies to “lock in” to particular technologies and locations. Development is in part chaotic because small events at critical times can have persistent, long term impacts on patterns of economic activity. Institutions matter because they shape the environment for the production and employment of new knowledge. Societies that generate and tolerate new ideas, and that continuously adapt to changing economic and technological circumstances are a precondition to sustained economic growth. Geography matters because knowledge doesn’t move frictionlessly among economic actors. Important parts of knowledge are tacit, and embedded in the routines of individuals and organizations in different places.

New Growth Theory, and the increasing returns associated with knowledge have many implications for economic development policy. New Growth Theory underscores the importance of investing in new knowledge creation to sustain growth. Policy makers will need to pay careful attention to all of the factors that provide incentives for knowledge creation (research and development, the education system, entrepreneurship and the tolerance for diversity, macroeconomic expectations, openness to trade). Because it undermines the notion of a single, optimal general equilibrium, New Growth Theory implies that economics will be less capable of predicting future outcomes. (emphasis added)

Excerpted from New Growth Theory, Technology and Learning: A Practitioner’s Guide. By Joseph CortrightImpresa, Inc

Our Fearless Leader

2009-02-05T10:36:00.001-08:00

More Dragon's Den

2009-02-05T10:28:00.000-08:00

Entrepreneurship in West Virginia

2009-02-05T10:18:00.000-08:00

Interesting article about a WV guitar maker's support for entrepreneurship in the mountain state:

http://wowktv.com/story.cfm?func=viewstory&storyid=51410

Michigan, Hard Hit by Economic Recession, Turns to Entrepreneurship

2009-01-29T11:20:00.000-08:00

Michigan’s economy has taken some severe blows in recent years as deindustrialization takes its toll across the mid-west. As a result, many Michiganders are turning to entrepreneurship:

The perceived risk in joining a small company or starting your own business is rapidly shrinking in Michigan as many large corporations - where job security was long-assumed- are laying off workers in the thousands.

The shift appears to be closing the gap between the uncertainty of starting a company and loss of stability in corporate positions.

[…]

Michigan has long been defined by a culture that is wary of entrepreneurialism and cautious about starting a company, several experts have said.

But contraction at the domestic automakers and the supplier community, job cuts in the pharmaceutical industry and the sluggish housing market are prompting some Michigan workers to reconsider entrepreneurialism as a livelihood.

"One of the positive effects of this horrible downturn that we're in is you do get that sense of, 'Well I have nothing to lose now. I can do what I've always wanted to do,'" Durance said. "I see people pursuing their dreams."

As Michigan's culture becomes more receptive of entrepreneurialism, local economic development officials believe the economy will become stronger.

[…]

As historically successful companies like Microsoft cut thousands of jobs, it's becoming increasingly clear that keeping a job at a large company isn't a sure thing, he said.

Job security has "long been abandoned in most companies," Adox said. "You really have to understand where the risk is."

But jumping from a large corporation such as General Motors or Chrysler to a small company isn't always a smooth transition.

In fact, small tech companies in the Ann Arbor region have occasionally been reluctant to hire employees and executives from large corporations.

[Michigan economic group] SPARK is hoping to help large company executives retool their skills and prep for an entrepreneurial environment by offering a new program called Shifting Gears… [because] large-company employees with very specific job descriptions sometimes are surprised by the broader list of tasks they have to tackle at a small firm.

And what of the future generation?

Risk aside, [one expert] said entrepreneurialism is among the most interesting topics for young people.

"When I was in business school 30 years ago, we didn't have any courses on entrepreneurship. The word didn't even come up. Nobody even thought about it," ... "Now it's not just the business schools, it's across campus. Entrepreneurship is what everybody is talking about."

Avoid the Humpty Dumpty Entrepreneurs

2009-01-26T09:44:00.001-08:00

What makes an entrepreneur a Humpty Dumpty entrepreneur? Here's Forbes' Dr. Steven Bergias:

Humpty Dumpty entrepreneurs have the kind of personality, or a particular psychological bent, that simply doesn't lend itself to entrepreneurial success. Mind you, these people aren't losers, mentally ill or doomed to fail in other pursuits. It just means that, in the same way that someone who can't jump probably shouldn't play in the NBA, Humpty Dumpties shouldn't start businesses.

There are three traits to a Humpty Dumpty Entrepreneur, he says:

Workaholics- For all their laboring, workaholics are neither addicted to, nor invested in, careers. Their toil is a socially sanctioned avoidance of social contact. By contrast, natural entrepreneurs tend to be affable charmers. How else would they lure talented employees with meager salaries and slices of potentially worthless equity?

Workaholics tend to be control freaks. Putting in all those hours regulates their (perceived) level of intimacy. Entrepreneurs are quality control freaks, driven to build their mousetraps according to Six Sigma ideals.

Narcicistic- You may ask, "What's the difference between a doomed narcissist and a confident entrepreneur with tons of chutzpah, brashness and screw-the-rules toughness?" Answer: Narcissists are committed to building a facade, while entrepreneurs are devoted to an ideal. That level of commitment neutralizes the rebuffs, insults and failures that inevitably come with running any company.

You can't buy your way into e'ship- Being a business builder is like being the parent of a child who suffers from colic: If you don't love the kid with all your heart, you'll never endure all those sleepless nights. And it's very difficult to develop a truly deep connection to a business unless you played a role in its birth.

Link: www.forbes.com/2009/01/22/entrepreneur-psychology-franchise-ent-manage-cx_sb_0122berglashumptydumpty.html

Student Entrepreneurship Should be Encouraged

2009-01-25T15:54:00.000-08:00

Interesting piece from BYU in Hawaii on why we should be encouraging student e'ship:

The time in life lived as a university student is awkward and unstable; people who will go on to lead very normal and responsible lives temporarily lose their minds. Ever-changing majors, couples, and Seasider menus are proving that apparently experimentation is the thing to do and “being young” is the perfect fallback when things go wrong. Most amazingly it is OK to fail and try something else, a lesson that is quickly lost upon graduation. So, sounds to me like the perfect opportunity to start a business!

Why Students Make Great Entrepreneurs:

1. Abstract Thinking: In many academic programs students spend a fair amount of time thinking about abstract concepts. The innovative gears are greased and ready to create fresh business ideas!

2. Higher Risk Tolerance: It’s helpful to recognize that when you’re a student your opportunity cost is likely lower than most other points in your career. When you’re sitting there in class and an idea comes to you, it doesn’t really cost all that much to give things a try.

3. Starry-Eyed Optimism: Let’s face it; starting a company takes a fair amount of optimism. As a student you have minimal resources, and the odds are severely stacked against you. You also, conveniently, have nothing to lose.

4. Trusted Peer Network: You have the opportunity to meet and work with a lot of different people in and out of the classroom. If you do it right, these friends and acquaintances will be mentors, clients, and even potential business partners. Yes, you read correctly. You can surf and socialize your way to success.

5. Applied Learning: As a student, you’re quite often “drinking from a fire hose” and bringing all sorts of new information into your brain. Some of which sticks and some of which, in reality, does not. Starting a business while you’re a student provides a practical outlet for your learning. You can internalize and externalize the classroom ideas in tandem.

Business Schools Turn to Entrepreneurship

2009-01-25T15:46:00.000-08:00

Business Schools, facing the dilemna of seeing their grads not get the kind of good jobs they were used to, are turning to entrepreneurship for help:

The National Entrepreneurship Network (NEN), a not-for-profit initiative that promotes the entrepreneurial culture among institutes, has been approached recently by many top B-schools. NEN is networked with at least 500 high-growth and high-potential start-ups throughout the country and is facilitating the interface between them and the institutes. It has so far enabled 73 students to get placed in start-ups over the last seven months.

Hopefully, the orientation of our B-schools will change from creating job seekers to creating job creators. Starting one’s own enterprise has been one of the least preferred options for students. The other day, B.S. Sahay, director of Institute of Management Technology, Ghaziabad, told me how last year three of his students, who won the best business plan award in a national contest, were still reluctant to convert the plan into an enterprise because they had good job offers. However, Sahay convinced them to start the business instead of running after jobs. This year, such students won’t have the luxury of options.

B-schools, on their part, should also reinvent their academic processes. Curricula need to be revamped, with redundant courses being scrapped; instead, more time should be devoted in identifying growth areas, filling demand-supply gaps and generating good business plans. They should also introduce courses such as how to start a business, write a business plan and raise capital.

Some institutes such as the Birla Institute of Management Technology are trying to reinvent themselves by focusing on areas such as rural business, social entrepreneurship, microfinance, micro-entrepreneurship, green business and clean technology, etc. It’s time B-schools started incubators on campus and helped students get finance for their projects. As of now, not even 10 B-schools have functional incubators.

Only those B-schools that are proactive in reinventing themselves can meet the crisis head-on. Those who just wait for the economy to recover are likely to lose out.

Link: www.livemint.com/2009/01/25215307/Bschools-must-meet-crisis-hea.html?h=B

Dragon's Den: Watch Entrepreneurs Pitch for $$$ (Make that £££)

2009-01-21T05:48:00.000-08:00

Watch this entrepreneur ask for £150,000 sterling pounds (nearly $208,000 as of today… i.e. a ton of money!). His product: a device that prevents overflow in bathtubs.

Am I the only one concerned about sales channels?

Hat tip to Paula, aka Big Sis, for turning us onto this show!

Dragons Den

2009-01-12T18:43:00.000-08:00

Are any of coaches a fan of BBC's program "Dragons Den"?
I've been watching it for quite some time now and I've found it extremely valuable in how present an effective pitch and (equally valuable) how NOT to pitch.
Early on, I found it painful to watch. I thought the Dragons were mean and nasty, but I finally got a thicker skin and realized that the hard Dragon questions are completely appropriate.
Watching the program is giving me a great insight into what investors want to hear and know about an entrepreneur's business.

Paula

Jakarta Post: Entrepreneurship More Than Self Employment

2009-01-08T03:46:00.000-08:00

Bingo! I would even argue that entrepreneurship is about more than owning a small business. A small business can be entrepreneurial, but it's not always a necessity. Here's the article, all the way from the Jakarta Post:

First...we don’t become entrepreneurs simply by leaving our current jobs or, for that matter, our present bosses. We can still behave entrepreneurially as a professional, even if we work for the government. In that setting entrepreneurship means contributing innovatively and creatively to the organizations we work for. Vision does not depend on the work place, it depends on care, hard work and positive thinking. I learned most of what I know now from the companies, both the small and the big, that hired me when I was first out in the work force.

Second, many young people get inspired by legendary (and exceptional!) entrepreneurs who made it with little academic background. But instead of learning why these entrepreneurs are successful, we too often mistakenly focus on what they did not have, a good education.
The exception doesn’t make the rule, so education, when we can get a good one, is still the most important factor. Legendary entrepreneurs, such as Richard Branson or our own Pak Bob Sadino, say the same. Even though they didn’t hop through the schooling hoops, they were no less prepared than those with degrees, because they – this is crucial – never stopped learning.

[...]

Next, entrepreneurship is not about earning to meet our needs; we do not live solely for ourselves. We live and work for the people we love and those who love us. I often see friends quit their jobs because they get tired of working for somebody else, and they lose the vision and purpose to give more and better for their family. That is selfish, unwise, and not what entrepreneurship is all about.

Entrepreneurship requires wisdom, not just blind intuition....

Lastly, entrepreneurship is the polar opposite of luck. You know luck, it’s the excuse that let’s us wait for our ship to come in, and the waiting makes us all the poorer. I like the old saying: “Luck happens to those who are most prepared when opportunity strikes”.

In the end, entrepreneurship is more about doing than about talking about doing. I want to share one take-away from my own experience as en entrepreneur: “If we aren’t having fun, we aren’t doing it right”.

Pink Slips Can Lead to Entrepreneurship

2009-01-05T13:18:00.000-08:00

Could we ultimately be seeing a round of economic Darwinism in the world of business today?

Check this story out:

When Mr Steven Low was retrenched two years ago from his sous chef job at Meritus Mandarin hotel, he received calls from hotels in Australia, Indonesia and the Philippines with job offers the very next day.

But the man credited for helping to create the famous Chatterbox chicken rice had already made up his mind to be his own boss.

He took the pink slip, the $20,000 payout for his 31 years of service and his winning recipe to start a stall selling - what else - chicken rice.

'It was a blessing in disguise. It came at the right time,' said Mr Low, 53, who was already harbouring thoughts of venturing out on his own when the axe fell.

With only the hard-earned experience of running a kitchen but not a business, the early days were, he admitted, 'a struggle'.

'There were so many things to worry about: whether customers would come, doing the sums, inventory issues,' he said.

On that first count, at least, he didn't have to worry. Loyal patrons followed him to his humble stall in a foodcourt at Downtown East in Pasir Ris.

Last April, he expanded his business, Mr Chicken Rice, into a 1,260 sq ft restaurant, also at Downtown East.

Retrenchment may be the biggest fear among employees in this gloomy climate, but it could also be a driver for entrepreneurship, said industry pundits.

While there are no statistics, Association of Small and Medium Enterprises (Asme) president Lawrence Leow said that anecdotally, those made redundant in the current downturn are more open to starting their own business.

'There does seem to be this trend. Maybe it is because of the pro-business environment the Government has been putting in place. In earlier downturns, the amount of incentives and pro-enterprise policies were not there yet,' he said.

Even Commies Support Entrepreneurship

2009-01-05T13:09:00.003-08:00

Whatever happened to that "workers of the world unite" stuff?

Tran Quoc Thang is the Deputy Minister of Science and Technology for the (still Communist) Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Here’s what he had to say in a recent interview about Vietnamese scientists’ efforts to commercialize new tech:

In developed countries, about 15 to 20 per cent of products invented are invested in and brought to market. But in Viet Nam, only about 5 to 10 per cent of inventions make it out to society. However, the products that have been applied have brought back lots of benefit. For example, a high-tech group at Hoa Lac Hi-tech Park has applied its product to clean a lake in Ha Noi; another group successfully discovered medicine to treat a disease of lobsters, which greatly benefited fish farmers.

[…]

We don’t lack money. We just lack feasible projects. We have lots of people who got high rankings in international competitions in math, physics and chemistry but have problems in applying their research… Scientists must find out what the society needs and have the will of a businessman. If not, their research projects will be worthless or of less value. Money will be wasted without making a breakthrough.

We have defined four key fields in science and technology to focus on which are information technology, construction materials, biology and automation. As an agriculture-based country with a high volume of agricultural products, we can invest more in preserving technology and post-harvest processing. In the high-tech field such as new energy, clean energy and nanotechnology, the Government is very willing to support all feasible projects. Breakthroughs in these areas are very important for scientists and businessmen. This is because scientific and technological products eventually become goods in the marketplace. Once they become goods, they will be accepted in the society and bought. Thus, the scientists will have orders for research.

Source: http://vietnamnews.vnagency.com.vn/showarticle.php?num=01COM050109