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What makes for a successful entrepreneur? Kauffman Foundation senior fellow Paul Kedroksy sums it up with one line: "They were maddened and frustrated at the world and they scratched their own itch and it turned out to be an itch that a lot of us have." Using Craig Newmark, Mark Zuckerberg, and Steve Jobs as examples, Kedrosky helps us understand this key "essence" of entrepreneurs in a Kauffman Sketchbook :

Christian Busch bills his company, Sandbox , as "the leading global network for the most inspiring innovators below 30." And it is based on the premise that young entrepreneurs want to "do well while doing good." It is a difference, he says, of the model put forward by previous generations where the Carnegies, Rockefellers and Gates take on philanthropic endeavors after they have had their success. In this Harvard Business Review Insight video, Busch speaks about the challenges and opportunities in creating an organization in which financial success and value to society are not treated as separate endeavors:

At VoxEU , three Finnish economists respond to a recent paper in which the authors assert that "cuddly capitalist" countries like Finland and other Nordic economies, "free ride" off of "cut-throat" capitalist countries like the U.S. Not surprisingly, Niku Määttänen , Mika Maliranta , and Vesa Vihriälä see a different picture. First, they take issue with the idea that the U.S. economy is more innovative: As Acemoglu et al. (2012a, 2012b) stress, innovation requires risk-taking. In a very innovative economy, one would therefore expect to find intensive job creation and job destruction, as firms that are successful in innovative activities expand rapidly while others are forced to exit the market. The available data do not suggest that the US economy is unambiguously more dynamic than the Nordic economies (Bassanini and Marianna 2009, OECD 2004). In Denmark, worker reallocation is more intensive, and in Finland almost as intensive as in the US (Table 1). Moreover, time series from the US indicate a marked decline in job and worker flows since the late 1990s (Davis et al. 2012), whereas – at least in Finland – both flows have stayed intensive (Ilmakunnas and Maliranta 2011). The authors go on to challenge the assumption that there is less dynamism in Nordic countries like Finland, and make the case that these are actually highly innovative economies in which entrepreneurs are encouraged to take risks for some of the same reasons they might be described as "cuddly" countries: One explanation for Nordic good performance might be that they are better in mobilising human resources. While hours per capita are higher in the US, a larger share of the working age population is employed in the Nordics owing to more inclusive educational, social and employment policies. This may imply that talents are harvested better for gainful economic activity. A second explanation could be the rather determined public policies to promote innovation. A third explanation might be that the economic incentives for innovation in the Nordics, while weaker than in the US, are not miserable after all, at least not across the board. For instance, all Nordic countries have introduced dual income taxation, according to which capital incomes are taxed at a flat rate. This helps in motivating entrepreneurs, despite quite progressive taxes on earned income. Sweden has recently encouraged wealth accumulation by abolishing wealth and inheritance taxes altogether. A well-designed safety net may also work to promote risk-taking. In particular, unemployment insurance may help risk-taking entrepreneurs by making it is easier for them to hire workers (see Acemoglu and Shimer 2000). Read Are the Nordic countries really less innovative than the U.S.? here .

With all the focus on jobs and the rate of job growth, Scott Shane reminds us we need to pay some attention to the self-employed. While they don't make up a significant enough fraction of the overall working population to affect big swings in employment data, growth in the numbers of self-employed might serve as a strong indication of increased entrepreneurship and a fertile startup environment. At Small Business Trends , Shane writes: A big jump in self-employment, particularly the incorporated self-employed who are more likely to hire others, might translate into job gains down the road. Unfortunately, the figures for self-employment weren’t nearly as good as the overall figures last month. The number of self-employed Americans rose by a seasonally adjusted 31,000 in September, 2012. The percentage increase was only one third that of people employed by others. The self-employed who run their own corporations – the biggest employers among the self-employed – had the weakest gains. Seasonally adjusted, the number dropped by 43,000 people last month. Over the long term, the numbers are improving, but not as fast as one might hope. Incorporated self-employment is still down by 188,000 (or 3.4 percent) since January 2009. Read the full post here .

Researchers at the Kauffman Foundation have accumulated quite a bit of data to show that companies that make a concerted effort to hire and promote women reap significant financial benefits. And Kauffman now points us to a new infographic that takes that highlights that data. This is from EZebis , with design help from Piktochart :

Nirmalya Kumar , professor of Marketing at the London Business School , says there is a reason that global corporations are no longer just outsourcing manufacturing and entry-level jobs to India, but are now sending management positions there as well. India, Kumar argues, is helping to lead global innovation. He highlighted entrepreneurship and innovation in India in this recent TedX Talk:

David Kelley is one of the most creative of the wise men in American business. His work at IDEO showed the value in developing a design process that was based on considering the user, the consumer, at the center of each stage of product development. In the process, he put a premium on creative solutions to problems. In this TedTalk , Kelley makes the case for developing creative people and creative processes in the workplace:

Esther Dyson is a big believer in startups and the power of entrepreneurship. So it may come as a bit of a surprise to learn that she is not on board with the JOBS Act . JOBS stands for Jumpstart Our Business Startups. Dyson doesn't seem to buy into the idea that government can do the jumpstart part effectively, and she likens such a move to policymakers thinking they could, or even should, help people fulfill the "American dream" of home ownership. Writing at Project Syndicate , Dyson commends the trusting spirit behind the JOBS Act, but explains that such a well-meaning initiative is rife for exploitation: I wish I had more faith in the system, but the problem is not a lack of good people, good investors, or good entrepreneurs. The problem is that, without regulation, bad people take advantage of the good ones. While regulation and restrictions may hamper small business, not all regulation and restrictions are useless. Yes, there are some wonderful, honest companies that deserve investment and can’t get it, but they are not that common. I see a lot of start-ups. Many are appealing and have good ideas, yet most of them fail. Now the quality of even the honest start-ups is likely to decline as more of them are established, and they will spend more of other people’s money before failing. For example, with more start-ups, it will be even harder for each of them to find management talent and the right employees. Indeed, many people whom an entrepreneur might have hired will probably become CEOs of competing start-ups. Meanwhile, all of them will be competing for a finite number of customers, and those companies that make progress will then have to compete for scarcer scale-up capital. Many investors in these startups are likely to lose their money. Even under the current system, many angel investors lose money. The best route to success in angel investing is to invest in, say, ten or more separate companies, so that you have the chance of at least one big winner. But, again, a broader investor pool is likely to reduce the average number of investments per investor, with inadequate diversification leading to many more losers than winners. The faith that drives the JOBS Act is the same magical thinking that drives many Internet phenomena: people are good and everyone means well. But the Internet’s easy accessibility and low entry barriers have led to spam and malware and bad behavior; each new service starts out “clean,” but then ends up requiring its own regulations. Read Markets of Magical Thinking here .