In an extended interview, philosopher Douglas B. Rasmussen responds to a series of questions about his life and work.
Dr. Rasmussen is a professor of philosophy at St. John’s University in New York. In addition to the books discussed in the interview, he is the author of articles in American Philosophical Quarterly, The Review of Metaphysics, International Philosophical Quarterly, and many scholarly anthologies.
Kaizen interviewee and guest speaker Robert Bradley, Jr. talks about the connection between green energy projects and crony capitalism on the Forbes website.
Dr. Stephen Hicks, CEE’s Executive Director, talks with Federico Fernández and Martin Sarano, co-founders of Bases Foundation, on the political and economic climate in Argentina.
The Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship welcomes Federico Fernández and Martin Sarano to Rockford College this Thursday, October 13, from 11 am to 12:15 pm, in Scarborough 208. Fernández and Sarano will give a joint lecture entitled “Doing Business in Argentina: The current business climate and the ethical dilemmas it presents to entrepreneurs and corporations.”
Federico N. Fernández and Martin Sarano are the co-founders of Bases Foundation, a non-for-profit organization devoted to foster awareness and promote the benefits that individual freedoms bring to society. Mr. Fernández (President of Bases Foundation) is currently editing a book on Karl R. Popper which will be published in 2012. Mr. Sarano (Vice President of Bases Foundation) is a Chicago Booth MBA student and has worked in different corporate and consulting roles in various industries.
All members of the campus community are welcome to attend.
Chief Executive surveyed 550 CEOs, asking them to rank each state in the U.S. based on taxation and regulations, workforce quality, and living environment.
Colombia may be associated with violence and drugs in popular culture, but it has recently been strengthening its entrepreneurial base, says the Kauffman Foundation’s Policy Forum Blog. The Colombian government has been removing barriers to starting businesses, educational institutions have been adding more entrepreneurship courses and programs, more business incubators are cropping up, and there is an increased focus on entrepreneurship in the media. Certainly there are still problems with drugs and violence, creating a chaotic environment that discourages many potential entrepreneurs. Nonetheless, some entrepreneurs have found creative ways to respond, such as a company that produces bullet-proof underwear.
Ken Phillips, in an article for Independent Contractors Australia, analyzes the failure of Australian government programs to nurture more entrepreneurship and innovation. The problem, he says, is that society is structured in a way that discourages self-employment. This decreases the amount of innovation in society because the experience of self-employment engenders a psychology of innovation. The self-employed person must constantly come up with new, creative ways to please clients. Phillips contrast self-employment to standard employment, which fosters a psychology of obedience to superiors and thus a lack of creative thinking.
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:
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.
