Wired Magazine interviews author Robert Neuwirth on black market entrepreneurs. The underground economy, Neuwirth says, is the second-largest economy on Earth (after the U.S.) and is a major source of innovation.
The Institute for Justice’s City Studies series examines the political red tape that keeps entrepreneurs from getting their businesses off the ground. The studies focus on “real-world entrepreneurs from eight different cities across the nation,” such as Los Angeles’ Jill Bigelow. Her “most frustrating experience while trying to open her restaurant was when an inspector would not allow her to open because her previously approved wall tile did not have enough ‘reflective value.’” Despite being in the top ten most economically free countries, the U.S. clearly has a long way to go towards truly supporting entrepreneurs.
Watch the Institute for Justice’s entertaining video that highlights some of the aggravating roadblocks that entrepreneurs face:
ABC’s recent reality TV show Shark Tank is an American version of the BBC show Dragon’s Den, which we featured in a previous post. These shows share an intriguing premise: entrepreneurs pitch their ideas to a panel of successful businesspeople, in hopes of receiving venture capital or at least a helpful critique. There are a few clips on the official homepage, and many more on Hulu.
How can we create more jobs?
“The conventional wisdom is that [small] businesses account for half of the labor force and are therefore the engine of future job creation. That’s not quite the case. The more precise factor is not the size of businesses, but rather their age,” say Carl Schramm, Robert Litan, and Dane Stangler.
