A new Washington Post investigative report shows that at least $5 billion of small business set-aside contracts have been provided to not-so-small firms such as Lockheed, Dell, and Northrop-Grumman. Post reporters examined $89 billion worth of contracts designated as small business set-asides by the US Small Business Administration (SBA) and found 207 contracts for Lockheed [...]

America needs a national strategy that nurtures competitive and innovative regions, according to a new White Paper from the Association of University Research Parks (AURP). The AURP report makes the case for a national strategy to support Federally-designated American Innovation Zones. These zones would receive special incentives, and other programmatic support, based on their capacity [...]

If you’re looking to identify impressive young entrepreneurs, Inc.’s new list of “30 Under 30” (its top thirty young entrepreneurs) is a good place to start. These entrepreneurs are the vanguard of the nearly 80 million strong “Millennial Generation” that is already shaking up the business world via companies like Facebook and MySpace. Inc’s list [...]

The recent economic crisis and prospect of a global recession has raised many questions about the future of capitalism. Carl Schramm, Robert Litan and William Baumol, the authors of “Good Capitalism, Bad Capitalism, and the Economics of Growth and Prosperity,” addressed the many issues facing the world economy in their recent discussion “Could This Be [...]

Even with more bad economic news every day, it seems many experts still believe “the fundamentals of the American economy are strong.” The latest edition of the annual Global Competitiveness Report continues to rank the US as the world’s most competitive economy. America’s strong performance is attributed to good fundamentals, especially its impressive support systems [...]

A new US Small Business Administration Office of Advocacy-sponsored research report assesses the role of angel investors in funding new entrepreneurial ventures. The report is critical of existing analyses of the scope and scale of angel investing in the US. It finds that the angel capital market is smaller than previously estimated, and that most [...]

A new Policy Brief from the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU) makes the case for leveraging university R&D spending to promote state economic development. The brief contends that states could do an improved job of generating local benefits from the more than $47 billion in annual R&D spending based at US academic [...]

Now that college students have been back in school for awhile, many budding entrepreneurs are working on new business plans and concepts. They’ve got some great role models in Startup Nation’s latest list of the top 20 Dorm-based Businesses in the US. The list includes some unique businesses with some creative names. For example, Digital [...]

Ringing the opening bell of the New York Stock Exchange, hip-hop pioneer and serial entrepreneur Russell Simmons announced that he would be hosting a new creative entrepreneurial challenge called the Race to BE. The contest will encourage young people to leverage their artistic abilities in film, music and fashion into entrepreneurial endeavors. The reality-TV-style [...]

The Urban Institute continues to elucidate where John McCain and Barack Obama stand on critical public policy issues. Their latest work is on health care—always an issue of concern for entrepreneurs. Their philosophies and positions on health care differ in numerous ways. Obama’s plan focuses on covering the uninsured through a new National Health Insurance [...]