Living Entrepreneurship Blog / Babson Entrepreneurs

American Entrepreneurship

If you’ve been listening to President Obama’s recent speeches, you know that he is a strong support of small business owners and entrepreneurship, and it’s easy to see why. Small businesses produce over half of all private sector jobs, and 13 times more patents than large companies do (per employee). President Obama is asking for more entrepreneurs to step forward with their business endeavors and he’s working on ways ot reward them for taking risks and investing in more staff, research and development of their ideas. With a 10% jobless rate in America, he’s looking to the small business owners and entrepreneurs to create the jobs that will pull us out of this recession. This will benefit not only the unemployed, many of whom are on the verge of losing their homes (if they haven’t already), but also other business who rely on the sales made to these individuals, at home and abroad. It really will have a global impact. Specifically, President Obama is encouraging lenders to loan more money to small businesses and start-ups. He guarantees SBA loans to 90%, and is aggressively eliminating the fees associated with borrowing and lending this money. Obama has also been providing tax cuts, and incentives, primarily to the middle class, in an effort to keep the wealth available for reinvestment into creative innovation and new business. On top of these specific changes, President Obama has also made several calls to action to our nation’s leaders. He asks that our educational leaders put more effort into fostering and nurturing an entrepreneurial spirit in students. Specifically, he asked that we put more focus into what are called the STEM fields of study (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math), and he’s discussed offering additional rewards and incentives for teacher performance. He is also looking into ways to combine entrepreneurship here in the United States with other countries across the globe. We will have to wait and see if our administration takes Obama’s words and puts them into action, but we should remain hopeful that change and improvement are in our near future.