NCOE Issues Guide for Creating Jobs, Stronger Local Economies

With heightened public interest in the state of the economy, the National Commission on Entrepreneurship (NCOE) has released Entrepreneurship: A Candidate’s Guide — Creating Good Jobs in Your Community, a first-of-its-kind publication on how policymakers can help stimulate the creation and growth of new businesses in their local areas.

Fast-growth new companies can have a profound effect on local economies. The NCOE guide offers a prescription for developing successful entrepreneurial-friendly environments to foster new companies and fuel jobs.

"A key fact revealed in the guide is that high-growth entrepreneurial activity exists in all regions of the country, and most start-ups are not high tech," said Patrick Von Bargen, executive director of NCOE. "There is no reason policymakers and candidates should leave their communities out of this growth opportunity which has resulted in the creation of 2/3 of all net new jobs and over 70 percent of all innovation in the U.S during the last 25 years."

The guide addresses several myths, offering a definition for and the role of today’s entrepreneurs and how they affect the local economy. It provides policymakers and candidates strategies to foster economic growth by focusing on entrepreneurs’ biggest needs: access to talent, access to capital, a supportive social architecture for networking and a strong infrastructure.

The NCOE guide also suggests policies and programs that range from low-cost recognition and training programs to greater access to seed capital and simplified government rules and regulations for this business sector. By implementing these practical strategies, the report contends, policymakers can create a local capacity for home-grown companies that can lead to more jobs and greater economic prosperity.

Entrepreneurship: A Candidate’s Guide — Creating Good Jobs in Your Community is available at: http://www.ncoe.org/research/4249_NCOE_GUIDE.pdf.