The New Entrepreneurship

Everybody's talking about entrepreneurship and innovation these days as the path to prosperity. From the President and the Governor down to your local elected officials, the new mantra of economic recovery is "entrepreneurship and innovation". And that's great, because, as we've been saying for a decade, they really are the best hope any community or region has for developing and expanding its economy.

However, over that same decade, those of us at GCN who have tirelessly preached this gospel have lamented over the manifold defects of the word "entrepreneurship" itself. It's hard to spell, for one thing. And it's looooong. And it's too French.

More critically, it's been misunderstood and abused, to the point that for most people it means merely "small business". As we've pointed out repeatedly, it properly refers to companies that innovate, serve national or global markets, and have the potential to grow into very large businesses, indeed. But getting that point across still requires us to type "entrepreneurship" again and again.

We've searched high and low for a new term that more clearly (and concisely) articulates that unique growth enterprise, to no avail. We've even coined a new acronym, GLOBIE, but that still has "entrepreneur" in it.

Now we think we've found an existing word, that describes vividly why entrepreneurship is so critically important to a healthy economy. It's short, easy to spell, and by happy coincidence is the name of a famously exemplary entrepreneur.

Jobs.

In the final analysis, that's the who, what, and why of entrepreneurship. Yes, it also engages founders, introduces exciting new solutions to vexing challenges, creates sustainable value, and enriches private equity investors. But the thing it does best is create jobs - for the entrepreneur as well as her employees. Importantly, particularly for local economies, it creates good, sustainable, career-grade employment opportunities for knowledge workers, whose demand for goods and services creates even more jobs in the community. This multiplier effect is why smart civic leaders are committing resources to support their entrepreneurial companies.

There simply is no better way to stimulate employment across the industrial continuum spanning from services to production to symbolic analysis. And that growth in employment leads to another important benefit: revenue. The purchasing power of workers employed by entrepreneurial companies drives growth in the retail, commercial, and durable goods markets as they buy homes, cars, decor, apparel, and food and beverage. Those purchases in turn generate tax revenues, especially sales and property taxes that fund critical services, including education, public safety, infrastructure and cultural resources. Innovation is about solving problems and monetizing the solution. When you think of it that way, "Innovation" is another word for "Revenue".

So save your typing fingers from getting tangled up with the conventional nomenclature. Just remember: Jobs is the new Entrepreneurship, and Revenue is the new Innovation.