Professor Donna Matias of the University of San Diego School of Law describes some of the regulatory obstacles that entrepreneurs — especially those with low income —face:

Eduardo Marty is the Founder of Junior Achievement Argentina, an educational outreach program. Students in JA are taught how to prepare a business plan and raise funds. Approximately 50,000 students per year across Argentina participate. Marty has also held academic posts as professor at the University Francisco Marroquín, Guatemala, and the University of Buenos Aires. He was the host of Buenos Aires’s major television talk show Boom—Politics and Economics. We met with Mr. Marty in Buenos Aires to talk about his business education programs for young people and the state of entrepreneurship in South America.

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Kaizen: Where did you grow up in Argentina?

Marty: In Buenos Aires. I went to elementary and high school here and the University too.

Kaizen: Before university, what was your education like?

Marty: Well, I went to school called National Buenos Aires. That’s the oldest high school in Buenos Aires, created in 1770. It’s a public school, but it’s a very prestigious one. It was the first school in Buenos Aires. To enter, you need to pass a very tough test once you finish elementary school. From five students submitting and applying—they accept just one. Our education is divided into elementary school and then secondary school. When I was in sixth grade I tried to pass the exam and I did it, so I was one year younger than the rest.

The Jewish community attends that school a lot. It is a very intellectual community here in Buenos Aires. By the way, you know that after New York Buenos Aires has the second largest Jewish community in the hemisphere.

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In our latest issue of Kaizen we feature an interview with Eduardo Marty, Founder of Junior Achievement Argentina and former host of Buenos Aires’s major television talk show Boom—Politics and Economics.

Also featured in Kaizen are student essay contest winners Kathleen Simmert, Nathaniel Branch, and Amelia Franceso, and guest speaker Nimish Adhia.

A PDF version of Kaizen is available here. We will soon post separately the full interview with Mr. Marty.

If you would like to receive a complimentary issue of the print version of Kaizen, please email your name and postal address to CEE [at] Rockford.edu.

Last week, Big Think started a ten day series on the future of capitalism. Through articles and videos, the series examines the impact on capitalism of technologies such as 3D printing, virtual products and currencies, data analysis, and the relationship between governments and markets. Also featured is an interview with John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods and co-founder of Conscious Capitalism with recent CEE guest speaker Michael Strong.

Mary Mazzio is an award-winning independent filmmaker, Olympic rower, and former law firm partner with Brown Rudnick. She received her undergraduate degree from Mount Holyoke College, a law degree from Georgetown University, and studied film production at Boston University. Her company, 50 Eggs, LLC, has produced five independent films shown across the United States on television, in classrooms, and in theatres. We met with Ms. Mazzio outside of Boston, Massachusetts, to explore her thoughts on entrepreneurship and the challenges and excitement of making documentaries.

Kaizen: You’ve been a lawyer, an Olympic rower, and now a documentary filmmaker. When you were young, did you have any idea your adult life would be so varied?

Mazzio: Not at all. Although as a kid I remember always having a sort of boundless enthusiasm for whatever it was that I was doing. So I always thought that good things would happen in the end but I had no idea.

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Michael Strong and Magatte Wade, CEE’s final Fall 2010 Guest Speakers, discuss with Dr. Stephen Hicks the social and lifestyle benefits of entrepreneurship, as well as what type of society best promotes entrepreneurship. Mr. Strong and Ms. Wade gave talks in conjunction with Dr. Hicks’s Business and Economic Ethics class.

Watch Part I

Watch Part II

On Wednesday, November 3^rd CEE’s final Fall 2010 guest speakers, Michael Strong and Magatte Ward, will each give a talk at Rockford College.

Michael Strong: “Be the Solution: How Entrepreneurs and Conscious Capitalists Can Solve All the World’s Problems”

Michael Strong is the co-founder (with John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods Market) and Chief Visionary Officer of Conscious Capitalism, Inc., a non-profit organization that promotes Conscious Capitalist solutions to world problems. Michael’s work is featured in academic journals (The Journal of Business Ethics, Economic Affairs, Critical Review, etc.) and in media reaching popular audiences (The New York Times, Bloomberg, The Huffington Post, RealClearPolitics, etc.). He is author of The Habit of Thought: From Socratic Seminars to Socratic Practice and co-author of Be the Solution: How Entrepreneurs and Conscious Capitalists Can Solve All the World’s Problems.

Magatte Wade: “How an African Entrepreneur is Working to Solve African Problems”

Magatte Wade is a serial entrepreneur who was raised in Senegal, educated in Germany and France, and began her entrepreneurial career in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she co-founded Adina World Beverages. Her current project is The Tiossano Tribe, Inc., a high-end skin care products line. Magatte writes and speaks for many audiences, and is on the boards of several non-profits that support African causes, including Afropop Worldwide, the SEEDS Academy, AllforAfrica.com, and ASNAPP.

Michael and Magatte will give their talks in conjunction with Dr. Hicks’s Business and Economic Ethics class on:

Wednesday, November 3

11 am, SCAR 220

All who are interested may attend.

Jonathan Ortmans covered Bolivia in his recent Policy Forum Blog post. “…[I]t is young firms that grow that provide the most benefits to society in terms of job and wealth creation and innovation,” he writes. “Thus, the challenge ahead for Bolivia is to enable more growth entrepreneurs.” the problem, according to Ortmans, is that the Bolivian government’s policies “discourage the participation of entrepreneurs in the economy.”

However, “young Bolivians understand that they can create a “new” breed of enterprise, different from the micro-businesses that have flourished in Bolivia due to necessity. They envision enterprises that capture opportunities for innovation and that generate more employment, more wealth and improved social conditions for everyone in the process.”

Read the full article here.

The Mercatus Institute, “a university-based research center [that] works to advance knowledge about how markets work to improve our lives,” has a web page devoted to research on Hurricane Katrina. Questions explored by the Mercatus researchers include: How did New Orleans communities that have recovered since Katrina do so? What effect did social entrepreneurship have on their recovery? What kinds of government policies could facilitate a quicker recovery from future disasters? Among the experts featured are two CEE Guest Speakers, Emily Chamlee-Wright and Steven Horwitz.

Watch our video interview with Dr. Chamlee-Wright in which she talks about her research on some of the above issues.

Also, watch our interview with Dr. Horwitz on the role of Wal-Mart in New Orleans’ recovery.

Finally, explore Mercatus’ fascinating website here.

In India, there are 200 million people who need eye care and less than ten percent of them have been reached. Moreover, 80 percent of these eye problems can be easily prevented or treated. Thulasiraj Ravilla, Executive Director of the Aravind Eye Care System, talks about how the clinic manages to serve such a large number of patients each year, only 40% of them paying customers. Dr. V., the clinic’s founder, chose an interesting source of inspiration when looking for a way to deliver low cost, consistent, efficient service in India and worldwide – McDonald’s. Watch the video below.