By May, a new law in Chile should be in effect, allowing entrepreneurs to incorporate their businesses online for free within one day. This is part of Chile’s Year of Innovation, a billion-dollar initiative launched by President Sebastián Piñera, which is designed to simplify the process of innovation for Chileans.
Read more about the new law here.
Learn about Chile’s Year of Innovation.
Professor Stephen Hicks, CEE’s Executive Director, interviewed guest speaker Arielle John (Beloit College) about the influence of culture on entrepreneurship. Watch the interview below.
On January 31, Professor Arielle John will speak on “How culture influences entrepreneurial decision-making.” Professor John is a native of Trinidad and a Ph.D. candidate in economics from George Mason University. She currently teaches in the Department of Economics at Beloit College, Wisconsin.
Professor John’s talk will be held in Scarborough Hall, room 212, from 11 am-12:15 pm. All members of the campus community are welcome to attend.
Kaizen interviewee Steve Mariotti writes about his Network For Teaching Entrepreneurship’s programs in Europe. “Youth unemployment,” he says, “Is one of the biggest problems in the world. Its impact is particularly evident in Europe, where in November youth unemployment rates hit 23.7 percent in the European Union, and a whopping 57.6 percent in Greece and 56.5 percent in Spain. I believe youth entrepreneurship education can bring these horrible unemployment rates down.”
Read the rest at Huffington Post.
Related: our in-depth interview with Steve Mariotti.
At the 2012 Atlas Summit, Professor Stephen Hicks (CEE’s Executive Director) presented an Objectivist perspective on entrepreneurship and public policy.
The lecture’s themes include:
* Our schizophrenic public policy culture: health, sex, religion, money
* What wealth is: tangible, intangible, and institutional assets
* Entrepreneurism as a cultural asset
* Objectivism’s entrepreneurial ethic
* Principled strategy in a mixed economy
* Three challenges: abstractness, easy disagreement, being principled among the unprincipled
* Immigration policy
* Education policy
* Entrepreneurism and meeting the three challenges
Watch Dr. Hicks’s full lecture below:
William and Wilson Ling are shareholders and board members of Petropar S.A., one of the major producers of aluminum beverage cans and plastic closures in Brazil, and the world’s second largest supplier of lightweight spunmelt nonwovens fabrics for disposable hygiene applications.
Kaizen: To start with your background and how Petropar began. You were born in Brazil?
Wilson: All four Ling siblings are Brazilian—Winston (born 1955), William (1957), Rosa (1959), and Wilson (1961).
Kaizen: Your parents immigrated from China in the 1950s?
William: Our father, Sheun Ming Ling, was born in Beijing in 1921 and was raised in Wenzhou. He left China in 1948, in the wake of the communist revolution, first to Taiwan. In early 1950 he went to Hong Kong where he met Lydia Wong who was born in 1928, in Shanghai.
Our father wasn’t educated in a formal school; he was homeschooled. It was usual at that time for families to do homeschooling. So basically his education was at home with private tutors.
He lost his father when he was young—at age 12. So he stopped studying and started working as an apprentice. He joined the China Vegetable Oil Company (CVOC), which was a large entity with state and private ownership that had a virtual monopoly in the vegetable oil industry. It was there where he acquired all his experience in this industry. But he always worked as an accountant or as an auditor. He wasn’t involved in operations. He knew the operations from his work as an auditor.
For the third year in a row, Utah is number one on the Forbes list of Best States for Business. The ranking is based on six factors: costs, labor supply, regulatory environment, current economic climate, growth prospects, and quality of life. Some of Utah’s benefits for businesses are: a low corporate tax rate (5%), a young labor force (median age 29), and a relatively free regulatory climate (few frivolous lawsuits are rewarded).
View the full list of Best States for Business here.
Related: Mercatus Center’s list of Freedom in the States, ranked by economic and personal freedom.
Local governments give out $80.4 billion total to fund 1,874 business incentive programs (subsidies, tax relief, loan guarantees, and more). Where does the money go?
Explore the data with an interactive chart at The New York Times.
Startup Genome’s 2012 report ranks the top 20 startup ecosystems in the world. The authors used interviews, case studies, surveys, and secondary data to produce the rankings.
The top ten:
1. Silicon Valley
2. Tel Aviv
3. Los Angeles
4. Seattle
5. New York City
6. Boston
7. London
8. Toronto
9. Vancouver
10. Chicago
Download the report [PDF] here.
Related: Our interview with Judy Estrin on entrepreneurship, innovation, and Silicon Valley.
Our latest issue of Kaizen features a bold new design and an interview with William and Wilson Ling, shareholders and board members of Petropar S.A., one of the major producers of aluminum beverage cans and plastic closures in Brazil, and the world’s second largest supplier of lightweight spunmelt nonwovens fabrics for disposable hygiene applications.
Also featured in Kaizen are: an interview with Professor Matt Flamm about our Ethics Minor; our trip to the Students for Liberty Chicago Regional Conference; our screening of Atlas Shrugged: Part II; and our new Philosophy and Film Study Groups.
A PDF version of Kaizen is available here. We will soon post separately the full interview with William and Wilson Ling.
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.
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