Iceland took first place in INSEAD’s Global Innovation Index (PDF) this year. Last year it won an award for best entrepreneurship movement. Iceland’s strengths, therefore, in entrepreneurship and innovation could help the country recover from its recent banking collapse. Read more at the Policy Dialogue on Entrepreneurship.
Entrepreneurship is becoming more popular in Brazil, despite the relative difficulty of starting a business there and the complexity of the country’s tax system.
Read more about the conditions driving Brazil’s entrepreneurship boom at the Policy Dialogue on Entrepreneurship Blog.
And not only that, Brazil has the World Cup in 2014 and the Olympics in 2016.
Two weeks ago, the Policy Dialogue on Entrepreneurship explored entrepreneurship in Turkey. Now Jonathan Ortmans looks at Saudi Arabia and finds a very entrepreneurial country. For example, it is ranked number 13 out of 183 economies for “ease of starting a business” (the U.S. is number 8).
The Kauffman Foundation’s Policy Dialogue on Entrepreneurship has a fascinating article on entrepreneurship in Turkey. Why, asks author Jonathan Ortmans, does Turkey have such a low rate of entrepreneurship when it is so strong economically?
The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has recently published the 2009 edition of its international study, “Measuring Entrepreneurship.” According to the OECD website, this study is an attempt to better understand “the drivers of entrepreneurship” and “the links between entrepreneurship and its potential impacts.” The study explores such issues as the birth and death rates of enterprises, the number of innovative products created by small and large firms, and how easily entrepreneurs can access start up capital.
Read the report at OECD’s homepage.
Dr. Devi Shetty brings an innovative approach to heart surgery in India by using economies of scale to drive the price per surgery down. His flagship heart hospital, Narayana Hrudayalaya, has about 10 times the number of beds as its typical American counterpart, and the cost of surgery averages at about $2,000, versus the $20,000-$100,000 Americans pay. But does handling such a large volume of patients affect the quality of care they receive?
Read the article at the Wall Street Journal to find out.
Below a brief video interview of CEE’s executive director Dr. Stephen Hicks with our Fall 2008 guest speaker Anil Singh-Molares talking about entrepreneurship in a global marketplace and the connection between a liberal arts degree and success in the business world. Also, be sure to check out our interview with Mr. Singh-Molares for the September 2008 issue of our newsletter Kaizen here.
The World Bank’s Doing Business report for 2009 ranks countries in terms of how well their regulatory environment facilitates doing business. At the top of the list this year are: Singapore, New Zealand, United States, Hong Kong and Denmark. The report has also been tracking regulatory reforms that are supposed to make doing business easier. This year’s top reformer is Azerbaijan. Since the first Doing Business report in 2004, Eastern Europe and Asia have accounted for a third of all reforms.
Tim Kane, Senior Fellow at the Kauffman Foundation, gave this speech at the launch event of Global Entrepreneurship Week in Seoul, South Korea. Key quote:
Let’s not listen to those who say entrepreneurs are crazy. Investors often see failure as an asset in your record—not a liability. To them, failure suggests a tolerance for risk, a perseverance to succeed and, most important, a passion to push the envelope. So don’t give up. Learn from every mistake. And at each step, seek out and capitalize on the resources available to you, of the monetary and human varieties.
As for the rest of us, it’s our imperative to support the new generation of entrepreneurs and keep the pipeline of innovative ideas full and flowing. Young entrepreneurs are the world’s greatest natural resource. Innovators and those who inspire, connect and mentor them will lead the way out of economic danger and toward greater prosperity for all of society.
Anil Singh-Molares is CEO of EchoMundi, an international consulting, research and product development company based in Bellevue, Washington. Prior to founding EchoMundi, he worked for twelve years at the Microsoft Corporation in Redmond, where he was Senior Director of Vendor Relations and a recipient of the Microsoft Achievement Award. He is also currently a member of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. We met with Mr. Singh-Molares in Bellevue.
Kaizen: You are a successful businessman—yet as an undergraduate you majored in Philosophy and English Literature. That might seem a surprising background. Has your undergraduate education been relevant to your success in business?
Singh-Molares: Yes, absolutely. Philosophy in particular. English certainly gave me the ability to express myself succinctly and technically. But philosophy taught me how to think and taught me to appreciate that there are many sides to an argument, but that you have to make some judgment about what you think is the correct judgment. It has to be well-supported, it has to be well researched, well thought-out, but it should be grounded in common sense. And that’s why I, like you, am a big fan of the Greeks, Plato in particular, and Aristotle as well. So, it’s been very helpful.
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