Investigating the innovation activities of multinational corporations, this book uncovers and examines why the geography of innovation by multinationals is overwhelmingly local, in spite of their global operations in manufacturing and sales through case studies of produce development by three global players: Toyota, Sony, and Canon. The microdynamic approach of the book allows an in-depth investigation of the engineering and technical aspects of innovation making. The book unfolds the complex and constant process of trial and error in innovation and reveals three fundamental natures of innovation making: complexity, interdisciplinarity, and prototyping and testing. In order to manage these three natures of innovation, firms have to plan, ironically, for unplanned situations and to collocate knowledge, people, and resources.

Innovation and entrepreneurship are often considered two sides of the same coin. But are the links between innovation and entrepreneurship as inextricable as we think? From Innovation to Entrepreneurship questions this seemingly interdependent relationship, highlighting the different requirements of innovation and entrepreneurship. This book disentangles theories of innovation and entrepreneurship, empirically revealing the overlaps and differences between them. Demonstrating that the pursuit of entrepreneurship is the key to economic development, Yasuyuki Motoyama explores the concept that people are at the heart of entrepreneurship ecosystems.

As a typical Midwestern city, Kansas City and its successful entrepreneurs often are overlooked in economic development studies. We find, however, compelling evidence that the region has ample entrepreneurial success to celebrate, study, and share since numerous Kansas City area firms have appeared on Inc. magazine's list of the fastest-growing companies. We recently interviewed the founders of some of these firms in the city's information technology, biotechnology, and business services sectors about their views on the strengths and viability of Kansas City's entrepreneurial ecosystem. We gained valuable insights for area policy and economic leaders.

In 2010, Chattanooga was the first city to launch a fiber-optic Internet network that provided residents with high-speed Internet. Chattanooga has welcomed this new addition to their infrastructure and has used it to recognize and recruit entrepreneurs to start businesses in their city. We find this development is based on Chattanooga's deep history of collaboration and public-private partnerships that have been instrumental in spearheading the entrepreneurial movement in the city and the development of an entrepreneurial ecosystem. The case of Chattanooga demonstrates entrepreneurial growth as an economic development strategy, which has piqued the interests of community leaders in Chattanooga. We explore the community leaders' work throughout the paper.More specifically, we identified three layers of intertwined supporting organizations in Chattanooga: 1) two philanthropic foundations, 2) four direct entrepreneurship support organizations, and 3) four organizations in the public sector, including the mayor's office. The analysis of these major support organizations both makes a list of 'ingredients' and provides implications for the 'recipe' in the context of the ecosystem of entrepreneurship. The web of relationships between each layer and each organization works to make a stronger entrepreneurial ecosystem. The objective of this paper is to analyze those 'recipe' roles that mayors could play in the context of promoting an entrepreneurship ecosystem.In particular, we summarize the mayoral roles in four parts:• Be a cheerleader by discussing the importance of entrepreneurship and recognizing successful local entrepreneurs and by informally attending entrepreneurship-related events.• Identify major players who are involved in and supporting entrepreneurship, map them out, and cultivate relationships by periodically meeting with them.• Establish an entrepreneurship committee or task force to set the vision of the city. • Convene and broker entrepreneurship supporters, including nonprofit organizations, local anchor companies, and local universities.

Understanding what fosters -- and hinders -- firm formation and growth at the metropolitan level across the United States is a challenge. Entrepreneurship can be measured by a variety of indicators, and they each can tell somewhat different stories. Furthermore, because entrepreneurship can refer to the growth of firms from a startup stage to mid- or large-scale, no one dataset covers the full range of companies that fall in this category. This report contributes to the Kauffman Foundation's recent series of analyses on the rate of business creation in metropolitan areas. Going beyond identifying metropolitan areas with higher rates of entrepreneurship, we analyze what regional factors are associated, or unassociated, with entrepreneurial activity. Understanding what drives entrepreneurship at the regional level -- especially high-growth business creation -- will help policymakers and entrepreneurship supporters know where to invest their efforts. We examine entrepreneurship activity at 356 metropolitan areas in the United States employing three sources: the Business Dynamics Statistics, the National Establishment Time-Series (NETS), and data on high-growth Inc. firms. This allows researchers to investigate the rates of entrepreneurship from multiple angles: • the startup rate for all industries (BDS) • the rate for high-tech sectors (NETS) • the rate for high-growth firms (Inc.) Key findings in this paper dispel some myths about what factors influence startup rates and growth in metro areas: • Contrary to conventional understanding in literature, we find few significant factors that the public sector can affect. Despite billions of dollars in government research expenditures, the presence of research universities and patents are not associated with higher rates of entrepreneurship. • The most significant factor by the public sector is related to education. High school and college completion is important when it comes to startup rates. However, while it is true that a high ratio of college graduates in a metropolitan area means more startups, a substantial high school completion rate will further increase the area's startup rate. • The investment level of financial organizations, primarily by venture capitalists, in a metro area does not correlate to high startup activity. And VC-invested regions do not necessarily generate a higher ratio of startups. Policymakers should not rush to create public venture funds in the hope of creating more startups or a startup culture. • High-tech sectors are not hotbeds for all kinds of startups - only for high-tech sectors. In other words, promoting high-tech entrepreneurship does not necessarily bring up the overall economy. • Not surprising, but confirming, larger metropolitan areas tend to have higher entrepreneurial rates, possibly from the diversity and resilience of their economies. We hope that this paper and the new compilation of metro-level data will serve as the first step in promoting more rigorous research about the dynamic relationships between startups and regional factors, and the relationships between different startup indicators, geographic factors, and others.

Entrepreneurship support organizations, such as accelerators, incubators, co-working spaces, and networking groups play a vital role by providing information, mentorship, networking opportunities, and other valuable resources for entrepreneurs throughout the venture creation and growth process. Within this context, we have observed emerging practices to include a diverse set of entrepreneurs (e.g. women and minorities) by support organizations in St. Louis, and at the same time, identified more demands from entrepreneurs for this purpose. Based on more than 80 interviews and observations, we provide voice to entrepreneurs who utilize these resources and discuss how support organizations can more effectively respond to these demands, expand their scope and reach, and bolster their own role in strengthening the entrepreneurial ecosystem.

This report offers the first-ever deep dive into the geographic trends of America's fastest-growing private companies - the Inc. 500. Inc. magazine's annual ranking, which began in 1982, has become an important point of pride for high-achieving companies and a source of research for economists. Not until now, however, has anyone dissected the past thirty years of comprehensive data from these high-growth companies. Through a partnership with Inc. magazine, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation has done just that. In this, one of a set of studies examining Inc. 500 data over time, we offer a geographic analysis of how regional characteristics are associated with fast-growing companies and innovations. Tracing hundreds of Inc. firms per year and thousands per decade, we have captured a range of innovations and analyzed the regions that continuously produce fast-growing companies. Knowing that very little is understood about the geography of high-growth companies, we approached this analysis with a range of questions: where are the fast-growing Inc. firms located at the state and metropolitan levels? How have they shifted over time? Do we find greater geographic concentration of Inc. firms over time? How is the geography of Inc. firms different from commonly associated growth factors, such as high-tech industries, venture capital firms, and research universities? Part of “The Ascent of America's High-Growth Companies,” a Kauffman Foundation report series that analyzes geographic trends of Inc. 500 companies from 1982-2010.

State business climate rankings are popular and can be influential in policymaking. Past academic studies have criticized those rankings for being based on some subjective criteria and on state-level data. However, in this article, we propose, first, that a business climate is an individual perception, and second, that a business climate is a case-specific condition depending on industries and stages of firm development. Thus, it is critical to measure the business climate at the decentralized, individual level. We employ a newly released survey of over 3,600 small business owners and conduct hierarchical models to control both individual and state variables, and to examine within and between state covariates. Regression results demonstrate that most state rankings are null even for individual perception of business climate, and in fact some rankings are negatively associated. Moreover, contrary to the conventional understanding, personal income, corporate income, and sales taxes are not reflected in the perception, but property taxes are. These findings suggest a need for fundamental reconsideration of how policymakers use business climate rankings.