Entrepreneurs Can Lead The Way To Recovery
Bill Warner Sunday, April 05, 2009
In a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, Carl Schramm, the CEO of the Kauffman Foundation, gives a no nonsense interview on the importance of entrepreneurship in America.
*How awful is awful*
You all have read and heard on the news how awful it would be if the banks failed or if the auto industry failed, but nobody ever really explains what awful means and to whom it would be awful. Either it is really so awful that none of us could stand it if we heard the truth, or it is really not so awful and our system of capitalism would correct for the failure and we would build something in their places.
Mr. Schramm seems to come from the latter point of view. He has a beautiful line in the interview where he says their failures would give us a “moment when 1,000 flowers can bloom.” After all, that is how the natural selection process of capitalism kind of works. When companies cannot adapt to changing customer demand or keep up with their competition, then they will be punished by the market for their failure and other more resilient companies will take their places.
*We have seen awful before*
Certainly these failures have resulted from poor management decisions, an overabundance of harmful government regulation, an incompetence of legislative oversight, and greedy demands from unions. The solution now should be to have government step back from these institutions and let the chips fall where they may. The government is certainly not capable of running any business entity and where substantially involved in getting us to the failure point we are at today. An orderly bankruptcy restructuring would clean up a lot of the mess and put many of these businesses back in play. Coupled with a retraction of costly government regulations and an oversight function that was competent, we probably would be out of this slump a lot faster than trying to borrow trillions of dollars to bail our way out while creating a multi-trillion dollar debt and risking rampant inflation by printing trillions of dollars we don’t currently have.
*The entrepreneur can save the day one more time*
At the heart of every economic recovery we have had in recent years is the entrepreneur. It’s the innovative entrepreneur whose ideas, passion and dedication, create new companies in new industries, requiring new skills, that foster the economic growth and new jobs that turn the situation around. Our government should be totally dedicating itself to providing the incentives, tools, resources, education and seed financing for new business growth; not hanging onto failing business models that are proving themselves to not be viable. We should be creating more energy, including the drilling for our own oil, which will fuel economic growth through lower energy costs. Costly regulations that hinder entrepreneurship should be rolled back, including such things as Sarbanes Oxley, silly environmental protection regulation, and taxation schemes under the guise of global warming. These and many others stand in the way of the natural progression of economic growth that has served us so well. To curb the greed that has led us to this recession, we do not need more government regulation; instead we need more competent oversight.
*Take a look at FastTrac*
Mr. Schramm refers to FastTrac, a Kauffman Foundation developed program that helps entrepreneurs create a plan for their businesses. FastTrac is taking many forms throughout America as it helps thousands of bright entrepreneurs as well as reaching out to university and community college students, people in devastated communities, and underprivileged people. This program is important in that it gives entrepreneurs in their learning years a solid understanding of how to create a business. FastTrac entrepreneurs learn how to evaluate their market opportunities, assess possible competition and identify their value proposition. Then, on that basis, they learn how to build a business that will successfully pursue that opportunity, including how to get it financed. All entrepreneurs should go to the FastTrac website and look at the program locator for a program in your area.
You too can be one of the 1,000 flowers that will bloom.
Filed Under: Financing a Company, Business Strategy and Planning, Starting a Business
Bill Warner is the Managing Partner of Paladin and Associates, a business consulting firm in the Research Triangle Park area of central North Carolina, and is the Chairman of the Triangle Accredited Capital Forum, an angel investor network with over one hundred members throughout the southeast.
Bill Warner is the Managing Partner of Paladin and Associates, a business consulting firm in the Research Triangle Park area of central North Carolina, and is the Chairman of the Triangle Accredited Capital Forum, an angel investor network with over one hundred members throughout the southeast.
The Kauffman Foundation is an innovation-free zone lead by a socialist who has made a living off of taking credit for all the rewards of entrepreneurship, while taking none of the risks, while spending $150,000,000 on growing government, foundation, and state bureaucracies; instead of investing in entrepreneurs, innovation, and small businesses, and the rugged individual—the very source of all our welath. As America goes bankrupt and entreprnuers lose their homes and businesses, Schramm strategically funnels Kauffman’s monies to his sycophantic, innovationless socialist blogging friends. Needless to say, Kauffman would be horrified by Schamm’s hijacking of his foundation to promote risk-free Schrammenomics.
http://dealbreaker.com/2007/05/the-unsurprising-failure-of-et.php#comments
The funny thing is that Carl Schramm is “too big to fail.” He has invented risk-free entrepreneurship by hijacking a $2.5 billion foundation which does not fund innovators nor entrepreneurs (whom/which Mr. Kauffman expressly left the money for), but which increases the sizes of university administrations, funds sycophantic, socialist bloggers who laud Schramm’s insipid writings, while furthering Schramm’s fruitless campaign for a Nobel Prize for socializing entrepreneurship and growing government/foundational/MBA/economist bureaucracies to oversee and manage it.
Think about it. What companies has Schram created? He has given away close to a billion dollars to bureaucrats and socialists all over the world, and what has the result been? What has happened to the dow?
While the Fed nationalized the banks, Schramm nationalized the college band on univeristy campuses, giving millions to the state officials overseeing and managing “entrepreneurship,” and a couple thousand dollars to bands in business plan competitions.
The Kauffman Foundation has become a vanity press for Schrammenomics, complete with Web 2.0 technologies (which Schramm was slow to adopt due to his socialist, bureuacratic tendencies) which empower an army of sycophantic policy-wonk bloggers which Scramm funds with millions upon millions–-the very antithesis and opposite of true entreprneurship. For Schramm is a jealous god, and there shall be none others before him; and that is why he never cites Hayek, nor Mises, nor Howard Roark, nor John Galt, nor Branson, nor Jobs in his book with the juvenile title: GOOD CAPITALISM, BAD CAPITALISM. Nor does he cite Ayn Rand. One can see that Schramm is hoping to replace the works of Nobel Laureate eocnomists and bestselling authors with his dumbed-down, socialistic views of entrepreneurship, which must be managed by Schramm on a dead-man’s dime.
Would Schramm have made it on his own as an entrepreneur? The WSJ article states that he founded a Merchant Bank and a Health Care Service. But it gives names for neither. Why is this? And if the phantom companies were so successful, why does he need Kauffman’s resources to promote and peddle his lackluster books and socialistic philosophies as the economy crumbles because of “too big to fail,” domineering, innovation-free, risk-averse socialists such as himself?
Why doesn’t he take out a small business loan to fund his small press, instead of hijacking a foundation to fund his vanity publications? $150,000,000 sure can buy a lot of sycophantic friends, but yet, it does not buy character, truth, and integrity.
Check out Deal Breaker and the Kansas City Business Journal:
http://dealbreaker.com/2007/05/the-unsurprising-failure-of-et.php#comments
“It is interesting that Dealbreaker references Carl Shram of the Kauffman Foundation as an authority on ethics. Those of us who live in the Kansas City region know that Carl Schram and been a controversial figure since he was appointed to his post a number of years ago. Board members have resigned in protest of his leadership style and strategic choices. His controversial leadership led to the Missouri Attorney General reviewing the Kauffman Foundation for not staying true to the intent of Ewing Kauffman. The purpose of this review was stated as:
“In light of the public allegations of a departure from Mr. Kauffman’s intent, lack of appropriate oversight by the Board of Directors, and certain instances of conflicts of interest. ” (http://www.ago.mo.gov/newsreleases/2004/kauffmanreport030404.htm#conclusion)
See also this editorial from the Kansas City Business Journal (http://www.bizjournals.com/kansascity/stories/2003/09/15/editorial1.html)
Ewing Kauffman was famous as an ethical leader. Carl Schramm is not.
–http://dealbreaker.com/2007/05/the-unsurprising-failure-of-et.php#comments
I too am amazed by all the press that Carl Schramm gets for pouring fuel on the fire that is augmenting debt and killing the economy while opposing the entrepreneurial spirit.
He has grown university administrations in an unprecedented manner while aging boomers pocketed the cash that Kauffman had meant for entrepreneurs.
If you ever meet anyone form the Kauffman foundation, you will realize that it is Schramm’s way or the highway. He is indeed the polar opposite of Kauffman. He is neither and entrepreneur nor risk taker nor innovator, but an ambitious politician with a $2.5 billion warchest at his disposal.
I wish the WSJ had some their due diligence—his actions speak louder than his words., and after five years of his running the Kauffman Foundation and redefining entrepreneurship as a dictatoroial Harvard MBA bureaucracy apologizing for the banking scandals, one must wonder how much more of this America can take.
He had his chance and has failed in an epic manner, and he will probably fail at his main goal too—winning the Nobel Prize in economics. For it can not be bought—not even with the $2.5 billion he won in the lottery.
It is time for Schramm to step down and let Kauffman’s true vision be realized.
Bill:
Thanks for your comments on my Tax Take on the blog. I must say that I really enjoyed your latest blog, too. The analogy of natural selection and the 1,000 blooming flowers was dead on. What ever happended to the marketplace? I will defintely be following.
Jon
The Pritchett Perspective
When entrepreneurs innovate and create, according to Schramm, they do it for selfish motivations. But when Schramm takes credit for the wealth created by entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship via his elite Kauffmun-funded PR team and Kauffman-funded vanity-press buzzword bloggers, he does it for the greater good of humanity. And over the past seven years, he and his team of elite Statists have crusaded against the true entreprneurial spirit, while seeking to take credit for entrepreneurship.
“I sit on a man’s back, choking him, and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by any means possible, except getting off his back.”—Tolstoy Writings on Civil Disobedience and Nonviolence (1886)
Scrhamm and his socialist firends would have dominated in the Soviet Union, as the Statists redefine entrepreneurship as a puerile Web 2.0 riskless/centralized blogfest/PR machine/vanity press.
http://blogs.forbes.com/innovation/2009/03/america-still-loves-its-entrepreneurs.html
Yes—America still loves its entrepreneurs, but Schramm is the opposite of the entrepreneur, funding university administrations and creating vast technology transfer/entrepreneurship education bureaucracies in Schramm’s image—filled with lifelong, professional Statists who are jealous of wealth creators and entrepreneurs and pull out all the stops in opposing them.
The Kauffman funds were meant to fund entrepreneurs all across the land—not to be concentrated in one central-planner’s hands so as to build his vanity press/buzzword blogfest and further his campaign for the Nobel in ecomics, as millions of entrepreneurs lost their homes, savings, pensions, and businesses over the seven years of the central-planners’ anti-entreprneuerial leadership. Under Schrammenomics government spending has burgeoned in an unprecedented manner while corporate corruption has soared. And all the while, Schramm has remained too big to fail as the eocnomy crumbled under his anti-leadership.
How many more years is the Kauffman Board going to sit idly by as Schrammenomics funds innovationless university administrators and Statists? How many more homes, jobs, pensions, businesses, and savings must be lost, before the Kauffman Board reallocates the hundreds of millions directed towards Schramm’s vanity press/soulless, dishonorable boomer blogfest filled to the brim with conflicts of interest?
http://dealbreaker.com/2007/05/the-unsurprising-failure-of-et.php#comments
“It is interesting that Dealbreaker references Carl Shram of the Kauffman Foundation as an authority on ethics. Those of us who live in the Kansas City region know that Carl Schram and been a controversial figure since he was appointed to his post a number of years ago. Board members have resigned in protest of his leadership style and strategic choices. His controversial leadership led to the Missouri Attorney General reviewing the Kauffman Foundation for not staying true to the intent of Ewing Kauffman. The purpose of this review was stated as:
“In light of the public allegations of a departure from Mr. Kauffman’s intent, lack of appropriate oversight by the Board of Directors, and certain instances of conflicts of interest. ” (http://www.ago.mo.gov/newsreleases/2004/kauffmanreport030404.htm#conclusion)
See also this editorial from the Kansas City Business Journal (http://www.bizjournals.com/kansascity/stories/2003/09/15/editorial1.html)
Ewing Kauffman was famous as an ethical leader. Carl Schramm is not.
–http://dealbreaker.com/2007/05/the-unsurprising-failure-of-et.php#comments
http://uk.reuters.com/article/gc06/idUKTRE53H1B920090418
http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/how-to-fix-business-schools/2009/04/can-ethics-classes-cure-cheati.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/18/business/economy/18grads.html?ref=business
Talk talk talk talk talk talk, PR release, soundbite, soundbite, blog, blog, talk, talk, talk, PR release, talk, fund blog to review schrammenomic books with kauffman funds, talk talk talk, blog, blog blog. And the DOW goes down, down, down, along with the economy, pensions, savings, and the American Dream. Hord. Hord. Hord Kauffman funds for personal profits/book promotions/book tours. Deny entrepreneurs funding while pocketing millions meant for entrepreneurs and funding friends and schrammenomic “team players.” Write another vanity-press book. Send to sycophantic buzzword Harvard MBA/JD bloggers.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aL0jFzKptwwg&refer=us
Nowhere in the Kauffman mission statement did Mr. Kauffman say that one risk-free, Machiavellian man/Statist should so dominate and transmorgify the fruits of Mr. Kauffman’s vison, service, leadership, and entrepreneurship.
Over the past seven years as the DOW plummeted, housing prices plummted, and tens of millions of American’s lost their jobs/homes/savings/penisons to Schrammenomics, Schramm has pocketed millions and doled out hundreds of millions more to university administrators and elite blogger/lawyers supporting his campaign for the Nobel in ecomomincs.
Schramm had a vast opportunity to directly fund entrepreneurs and innovation—to lead an army of entrepreneurs; but as his major goal was the Nobel in economics and not fostering wealth creation and growth, nor saving the US Constitution nor economy; he focused on PR and “being liked” and surrounding himslef with syocphantic socialists who could put on the best entrepreneuership dog and pony shows. And after seven long years of anti-entrepreneur Schrammenomics, the unemployment rate has hit an all-time high:
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&q=unemployment&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wn
Under Schramm’s anti-leadership (As the WSJ article states that he is proud that nobody knows what it is that Kauffman does), Kauffman will not fund entrepreneurs nor innovators nor risk-takers, but Schramm’s purloined empire will instead merely seek to take credit for the entrepreneurs’ innovation, work, and wealth creation via PR releases.
Notice what has happened over the past seven years since Schramm took the helm of the Kauffman Foundation and redefined entrepreneurship in his own elite, “never worked a day in my life,” “never filed a patent nor launched a company with an actual name,” “too big to fail” image.
This is because Schramm sees entrepreneurs as greedy, selfish people. And that is why he receives the lion’s share of the Kauffman funds to promote his vanity press and hire an entire cabal of “growthology” bloggers and Harvard MBAs to coin new buzzwords so as to transfer more wealth into Schramm’s pocket as the economy declines. For when entrepreneurs seek money, they do it for selfish reasons. But when Schramm’s “schrammenomic” Harvard MBA/blogger/lawyer friends seek money, they do it for the greater good of society.
When entrepreneurs innovate and create, according to Schramm, they do it for selfish motivations, and thus the Statist will not fund them. But when Schramm takes credit for the wealth created by entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship via his elite Kauffmun-funded Harvard MBA/PR team and Kauffman-funded vanity-press buzzword bloggers, he does it for the greater good of humanity.
Schrammenomics is the problem—not the solution.
