President Obama’s efforts to fuel innovation and entrepreneurship are wide-ranging and unprecedented. As Chief Technology Officer of the United States (a position created for the first time by President Obama), I see these efforts first-hand throughout the Administration—and as an entrepreneur who cofounded a company at age 24 and took it public ten years later, I have a special appreciation for how startups and innovation create jobs and prosperity across the country
Let’s focus on three areas where the President’s leadership is making a huge impact: promoting high-growth entrepreneurship, helping accelerate technology breakthroughs, and investing in the “building blocks” of innovation. This is by no means a comprehensive list of every Administration effort to foster innovation across the United States, but every example below is specific, impactful, and well underway.
Promoting high-growth entrepreneurship Unlocking capital: This spring President Obama signed the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act (
http://wh.gov/QBy), a bipartisan bill that allows startups to raise capital from investors more efficiently, among other initiatives, by allowing small-dollar crowdfunding investments (
http://wh.gov/3Buf), expanding mini-public offerings, and creating an “IPO on-ramp” consistent with investor protections. This is on top of an Administration commitment of $2 billion to match private investment in high-growth companies over the next five years through vehicles such as Impact Investment Funds (
http://1.usa.gov/rfYCI8) and Early Stage Innovation Funds (
http://1.usa.gov/JFf36a)
. The Small Business Investment Company program just had a record year in 2011 of helping over 1,000 businesses get $2.6 billion in capital.
Nurturing entrepreneurial talent: President Obama has taken executive action to make it much easier for graduates to manage student loan debt (
http://wh.gov/uc1) and pursue an entrepreneurial path (
http://wh.gov/TX5). The Administration has launched new mentorship and training opportunities for thousands of entrepreneurs starting new high-growth companies—including military veterans (
http://1.usa.gov/NHNTE8)
, undergraduate engineers (
http://1.usa.gov/qJOiWK)
, and clean energy entrepreneurs (
http://1.usa.gov/fm47Pr) and students (
http://1.usa.gov/o0kdfS) — and is engaged in sustained efforts to attract and retain immigrant entrepreneurs who create jobs here in the US (
http://1.usa.gov/NglcgG)
.
Speeding up “lab to market” research: The President has directed all federal research agencies to help accelerate innovation (
http://wh.gov/Tuh) by speeding up grants to startups. The National Science Foundation launched an Innovation Corps (
http://1.usa.gov/pQSt45) to get teams of scientists out of the lab and starting new companies. Over twenty federal agencies have cooperated to fund regional entrepreneurial ecosystems (
http://1.usa.gov/qV9X0e)
, and are dramatically streamlining patent licenses for entrepreneurs in clean energy (
http://techportal.eere.energy.go...) and biotech (
http://www.ott.nih.gov/startup).
Liberating data to fuel innovation: The Administration has launched a series of Open Data Initiatives—in health (
http://wh.gov/5bg), public safety (
http://wh.gov/v9W), education (
http://wh.gov/uDZ), and energy (
http://wh.gov/OGKY) —to stimulate entrepreneurial innovation using newly unleashed data from government and other sources. As a model, decades ago, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (
http://noaa.gov) began making weather data available for free electronic download by anyone. Entrepreneurs utilized these data (
http://data.gov) to create weather newscasts, websites, mobile applications, insurance, and much more. Today, entrepreneurs are using freely available government data and building apps and services that help Americans in an expanding number of ways – e.g., apps and service...
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