The Institute for Justice has an inspiring series of five reports on the beneficial effects of entrepreneurship on the entrepreneurs themselves and on their communities. The reports also highlight the entrepreneurs’ struggles against unnecessary regulations. Says the author of one report: “If the impact of this one entrepreneur in a relatively small Mississippi community can be as wide and deep as documented in this report, imagine the transformation entire communities of unhampered entrepreneurs could create in America’s largest cities where hope and opportunity are in such great demand.”

Read the Power of One Entrepreneur series here.

The Kauffman Foundation published the findings from their study, “Are Women Entrepreneurs Different From Men?” The researchers asked successful, high growth male and female entrepreneurs what factors they believe led to their success. Some the key factors that female entrepreneurs valued more highly than males were professional and personal networks and support.

Read the article at the Kauffman Foundation for more.

Judy Estrin, CEO of JLabs, is the co-founder of seven technology companies.  She was the Chief Technology Officer of Cisco Systems from 1998 to 2000 and has served on the boards of Rockwell and Sun Microsystems. Currently, she is on the Board of Directors of the Walt Disney Company and FedEx, the advisory board of Stanford’s School of Engineering and Bio-X interdisciplinary program, and the University of California President’s Science and Innovation Advisory Board. Most recently, she is the author of Closing the Innovation Gap (McGraw-Hill, 2008). We met with Ms. Estrin in Menlo Park, California to explore her thoughts on educating and managing for entrepreneurship and innovation.

Kaizen: What was it like growing up in a high-powered science-and-engineering family?

Estrin: That’s hard to answer because I don’t know anything but growing up steeped in science. A lot of the trips we took during the summer were to academic scientific conferences throughout the world. As I talk about in the preface of Closing the Innovation Gap, it wasn’t just that my parents were both academics, but both were Ph.D.s in electrical engineering — it was quite rare at the time for a woman to have a Ph.D. in electrical engineering. And so I just grew up in an environment where I was surrounded by academics and scientists.

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Motherhood brings many joys and challenges, but some mothers also “struggle with giving up their adult identity, the ability to interact with other adults on an intellectual, problem-solving level,” says mother and entrepreneur Sara Sutton Fell. In a profile by Sramana Mitra, Ms. Fell describes how entrepreneurship helped her to regain the values she had been missing as a stay-at-home mom.

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Read the article at Forbes.

Ms. Mitra also has a longer interview with Ms. Fell at her website.

In our latest issue of Kaizen we feature an interview with Judy Estrin, CEO of JLabs, co-founder of seven technology companies, and author of Closing the Innovation Gap.

In this issue we also feature guest speakers Joshua Hall and Jerry Kirkpatrick and student essay contest winners Erin Filak, Kristy Luck, and Elliot Welsh.

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

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.

The Small Business Administration notes that “Women entrepreneurs are among the fastest growing groups of business owners” and explores why.

Meanwhile, at the Wall Street Journal web log, a lively discussion about “Why Aren’t There More Rich Women Entrepreneurs?”