Although I had big dreams in my youth, I’m not sure that planning a worldwide event with a global leader was on my life goals bingo card. Yet, one day a little over 15 years ago, I was on a conference call with the then Kauffman Foundation CEO, Carl Schramm, and with representatives of then Prime Minister Gordon Brown, discussing how to take an entrepreneurship event started in Great Britain worldwide.
Coming out of those conversations, the working group launched the first ever Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW). Since relatively modest beginnings, GEW has grown over the past 15 years to include 200 countries, more than 40,000 activities, and more than 10 million people. That’s annually.
The idea that launched GEW and the Global Entrepreneurship Network (GEN) was simple – create a platform of projects and programs that make it easier for anyone, anywhere to start and scale a business.
GEN is about creating the networks for collaboration – bringing together entrepreneurs, investors, researchers, policymakers, and those helping entrepreneurs to create a full ecosystem approach. As the Kauffman Foundation has said, ‘entrepreneurship is a “community sport.”’
Yet many people – including many businesspeople – don’t realize exactly why it’s so important to support new and growing businesses. Entrepreneurs and the companies they start are essential to our communities for a couple of big reasons.
First, they bring new things to market, meeting needs that were previously unmet. Since the pandemic began, there has been a heavy reliance on Zoom – which is a product from a startup company. And to help control the pandemic, many of us had the vaccine from Moderna, another startup company. Even on a local level, if a new service shop or a small manufacturer gets started and takes hold, clearly, it’s providing something that people needed or wanted.
And the other reason: Entrepreneurs create the most net new jobs. The Kauffman Foundation has supported studies of job creation that shed an interesting light on the issue. Instead of asking what kinds of companies or industries hire the most people, these studies looked at jobs created versus jobs lost by age of the companies involved. The findings? Most net job growth – meaning, more jobs added than lost – comes from younger companies, in the startup phase or early growth.
That is why entrepreneurs are essential to successful communities. And unfortunately, many people have a misconception of where we stand. There’s a tendency to think that we Americans are living in a Golden Age of Entrepreneurship. Over the past few decades, we’ve seen waves of startup companies that grew big, from Apple to Amazon, Google and more. But these high-profile success stories, valuable as they may be, mask a few disturbing gaps that lie underneath.
Overall, per capita rates of new business creation in the U.S. have been declining or flat-lining over the past 40 years. There’s been an uptick recently, but it must compensate for the many businesses that closed during the pandemic.
People talk about the hollowing-out of the middle class, and maybe it’s not a coincidence that what’s also been hollowed out is grassroots entrepreneurship. Fewer and fewer people are starting local companies to serve local needs – many of which could grow to serve national or even global markets if they’re able to succeed.
The demographic groups in America that lag or struggle the most in starting and growing businesses are people of color and women. Black entrepreneurs tend to have the least personal capital and the least borrowing ability to get their companies off the ground and poised for growth. Women are about half as likely as men to start a business, and their startups tend to begin small and stay small.
Imagine the growth that might be unleashed by getting more people of color and women into the game. These people are our greatest unsupported potential for the future. So … what kinds of development strategies could help entrepreneurs thrive across all demographics, across the Heartland, nationwide, and globally?
Moreover, in a time of increased division, entrepreneurship brings people together. GEN works to educate people that the economy is not a zero-sum game. Enabling more people to do better does not mean that others must do worse. When more people do better, the impacts are generative. When more people start businesses of their own, they create jobs and economic growth. This also means a bigger tax base for communities, more funding for services and amenities, and even more charitable giving.
The Kauffman Foundation studied the barriers that people of color and women face in starting a business. The Kauffman Foundation also studied successful entrepreneurs and what helps them succeed. And that’s the kind of work that GEN has been doing – setting the table to provide everyone with the opportunity to start and grow a business. GEN helps by celebrating, understanding, supporting, and connecting entrepreneurs and those who champion them. Whether it’s GEW, providing research, informing policymakers through the Global Entrepreneurship Congress, or convening funders and entrepreneurial support organizations, GEN is committed to helping those with an idea grow it regardless of race, gender, or geographic location.
Watching Global Entrepreneurship Week grow from its start in Kansas City, USA and London, UK, is one of my career highlights. I’m proud to have played a role in its launch, but prouder of the impact it has made across the globe in helping people start and grow businesses. After 15 years of impact, I believe GEW, and all the work from the Global Entrepreneurship Network, has so much more potential based on what it has implemented and learned. I can’t wait to see how the next decades of work shape the ways communities support entrepreneurs and enable entrepreneurs to give back to communities.