NYT: Is Entrepreneurship Really That Easy?

By Scott Shane

Today, I received an e-mail message from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation announcing White House support for the Kauffman Foundation-New Economy Initiative to revitalize Detroit. The message made me wonder if the White House has found an entrepreneurship-based solution to all of our economic problems.

The Kauffman Foundation’s program involves a three-year $9.5 million investment “to assist auto suppliers and advance entrepreneurship.” The foundation claims that the program will create 1,200 new companies, generate 5,000 new jobs, save 20,000 existing jobs and generate $300 million in “spending power for the local economy.”

If this is true, then the White House should take notice. And it shouldn’t be Ed Montgomery, the executive director of the White House Council on Automotive Communities and Workers, who should be commenting, it should be President Obama himself. If the program does what the Kauffman Foundation says it will do, then we’ve got the solution to our job loss and G.D.P. shrinkage problems. (more)