If you have been reading my blog over the last few months you have read many comments which focus on the intersections between public policy and programs that can make a positive impact to help entrepreneurs be more successful.
Last week, two great pieces of news came out that continue to help connect the dots to smart public policy in the State of Ohio and how government can play a leading role in helping to transform the thinking and acting that states place in our national economy.
First, SRI International published a report that took at look at the economic outcomes that have resulted from the State of Ohio's technology-based economic development initiatives including Ohio Third Frontier. A press release and a link to the report can be found here. The study found that State expenditures related to Ohio Third Frontier of $681 million generated $6.6 billion of economic activity, 41,300 total jobs, and $2.4 billion in employee wages and benefits. According to the impact study’s figures, Ohio has garnered a nearly $10 return on every dollar of the State’s investment in the period from 2003 – 2008, with the expectation of increased impacts in the years to come.
Just after this report came out from the State, Secretary Gary Locke of the U.S. Commerce Department announced that the Commerce Department is establishing a new Office for Entrepreneurship and Innovation specifically to help entrepreneurs develop great ideas into workable business plans by giving them training, funding, advisement, access to data, and a big pair of federal-sized scissors for cutting through the red tape of starting a new business. This is an incredible example of public policy makers really getting it.
The SRI report demonstrates and verifies real, significant economic outcomes that are created by smart programs that work in Ohio. The creation of this new office in the Commerce Department shows vision and a commitment for the federal government to hopefully work more closely with the States. Now is the chance to put these two great opportunities together to really help take Ohio and the country to a new level of entrepreneurial sucess and promise.
Ray Leach is CEO of JumpStart and brings his energy and leadership experiences from founding five high growth entrepreneurial and intrapreneurial endeavors in the last 20 years. Ray is a Sloan Fellow and earned an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management. He also earned a BA in Finance from the University of Akron.