|
Category:
Published: October 2007
Jonathan Ortmans, president of The Public Forum Institute, speaks about the importance of the entrepreneur and fostering more dialogue on national issues like health care.
Success Magazine: What does success mean to you?
Jonathan Ortmans: I think it's obviously a subjective thing for every person. But I think success is an economy and a culture whereby we are fully able to maximize our potential. We have a phenomenal amount of challenges to overcome and barriers that we run across and problems within the world that we'd like to address through the marketplace or some other means, and I think success can be defined if we're actually able to fully realize the potential we have as human beings and address those issues.
SM: Are you speaking of the business side?
JO: Wealth creation is clearly a core element in what we need to do and clearly there is no better American way then starting a business and achieving success. From my perspective and in the context of a business, I think success is defined when you've actually managed to successfully implement your idea and put it into the marketplace. I know for many people they measure that through their profit margins and whether or not they're creating wealth and so forth. But I think, for me, business success is if I managed to get my idea into the hands of the consumers or customers.
SM: What is the purpose of the Public Forum Institute?
JO: We are an independent, not-for-profit organization that was formed essentially to foster more substantive dialogue on national issues in an impartial fashion. We deal with both local and national concerns. We have been asked to do a greater amount of work on our economy. More and more communities are looking to define their futures. At the Public Forum Institute we deal with a whole range of different issues from health policy to energy and environmental issues to other kinds of federal policy issues. But generally speaking, at the institute right now our primary issues are economic policy and health care policy. Those are the two areas where policy makers are struggling.
SM: Now, as you said, in jobless America the best way to escape poverty, in some cases, is entrepreneurship. What does the Forum do to help contribute to this?
JO: Well, we have an initiative called the National Dialogue in Entrepreneurship. It's designed to increase the depth of understanding about the role that entrepreneurship has played and is playing in both the development of our culture and of our economy. For the most part, what we are doing in this phase is redefining and elevating the field of entrepreneurship. I think it's been a tendency in the past for us to consider entrepreneurship to be synonymous with small business. I think there has been a tendency to under-appreciate the role that risk takes and innovators play in strategic growth in our economy, and so at the Public Forum Institute we are doing something called the National Dialogue which elevates this level of appreciation of the entrepreneur.
For example, we work very closely with the leading foundation in this environment, really the only foundation that focuses on these issues, and that's the Kauffman Foundation out of Kansas City. It is a two-and-a-half billion dollar foundation that is dedicated to advancing entrepreneurism, elevating the field placed in both a research context and a policy context, and enabling more entrepreneurs to succeed. And we also work in trying to open the eyes of many in Washington to the fact that the entrepreneurship should be taking place in their backyard. There seems to be an assumption in our nation's capital that when we talk about entrepreneurship we need to go to the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee. That's very important for doing some loan guarantee programs and things that the government thinks it should be doing in aiding small businesses, particularly struggling small businesses. However, it's our stance that we need to be nurturing to those who we are sometimes the most complacent about. We need to be nurturing a discussion about this in defiant circles. I would rather be asked to testify before the science committee than the small business committee because that's where you're really going to be finding more buttons to push that will enable the emergence of more successful entrepreneurs. That's just one example; there are other places where I think the debate's occurring. So the National Dialogue is working at trying to redefine what we mean by entrepreneurship, its value to the economy and society, and the place where we have this conversation so that we're including more people and a much wider circle of leaders and players who should be involved in this discussion.
SM: According to the SBA (Small Business Administration), 90% of all businesses fail in their first one to three years. What is your organization doing to help coordinate the efforts of all these entities out there? How can you help to reduce that statistic?
JO: Well, we're certainly doing everything we can to point out the plethora of resources available to assist those small business people with specific requests or needs that they have. Of course there's the Kauffman Foundation itself which puts, almost at no charge, a whole array of technical support type initiatives that can help entrepreneurs at their fingertips. There are organizations like the Entrepreneurs' Organization, and what they do is provide networking to help entrepreneurs help other entrepreneurs. There is an array of tools that are made available through government agencies. Believe it or not, it is not just the SBA that puts out a lot of programs and tools but all sorts of other agencies such as the Department of Commerce and the Department of Labor. I think soon there's going to be a website launched called which is going to be designed for effectively amassing the array of support that's available to small businesses.
We at the Public Forum Institute maintain a website.
If you go to , our national dialogue in entrepreneurship maintains a regularly updated array of resources available to entrepreneurs that might help. However, separate from that and perhaps more important than that, I think being an aggregator and the existing support is one thing, getting the entrepreneur to actually go to the trough and drink water is a different question. Generally speaking, entrepreneurs are very busy and I don't think it's for lack of available resources that they are not taking advantage of available support, I think it's for lack of time and awareness that these resources could be useful to them. However, it's the nature of entrepreneurship that it is a somewhat disorganized discipline. I think many entrepreneurs are indeed successful because they're not tying themselves down by thinking that if they fit into a regimen, events will drive things. I'd like to draw a distinction between what I call the sort of technical support which I think is very important on taking an idea to scale and the other part of it which is the creativity, the innovation, and the passion and energy of the entrepreneur. This is, by and large, where they end up spending most of their time. They're not necessarily getting out there and with our many regional partners in saying, "I want to get rich, so I'm going to find some business that I can do and I'm going to become an entrepreneur." Their passion is the first thing. In a way, I suggest that we should try not to organize the entrepreneur because of their uniqueness. Many of them don't have the stomach for the risk, so I think it's very important to point out resources, but it's also important to sort of allow them to maintain their imaginative, maybe somewhat messy flair that goes about the incubation of the business. So we are doing things to aggregate resources and we also want to do things to make awareness of the resources available, but we are not suggesting that we should be forcing those on the entrepreneur. Part of the creative potential is that they need to get it themselves; you can't tell them to do it.
SM: Now with regards to mentoring, do you do any matching, or do you assist in resources to an up-and-coming entrepreneur so they have access to people who want to mentor? For the most part, the entrepreneur doesn't go to the SBA; they break out on their own because they hate the establishment. They hate being under someone else's rule. But a mentor, who is of like kind, is a different story. Is there any organization or way to pull that together so they have access to the local individuals who want to help them?
JO: Yes, I couldn't agree with you more. I think the most important help you can give an entrepreneur is mentoring help because the mentor can help sort out the wood from the trees in terms of what is relevant for you to spend your time on. Depending upon the different entrepreneurial endeavors, it may not be a one-size-fits-all situation. The Entrepreneurs Organization and the Kauffman Foundation have mentoring programs, so what we have tended to do is point people to the availability of certain networks. I think the big thing that's changing is the willingness to join social networks because this is really the ultimate form of mentoring. By virtue of having a network you are able to get access to everybody else's network. Just like in the old days, we wondered how long it would take before we, as members of the general public, would feel comfortable about shopping on the Internet. People worried about who might be looking at their credit card, but now most people are comfortable with it. And I think the same is true with the virtual social networking that's going on now.
So we've got a generation of new entrepreneurs about to enter the entrepreneurial space, who have all grown up with Facebook and YouTube and these kinds of cultures where it's perfectly okay to put your profile out there and there are safe ways of doing it. I think this is probably going to be the driving way that entrepreneurs are going to do it, because they will put something out very quickly and electronically into their network about what their challenge is. They'll get responses quickly and they can do it at two o'clock in the morning, if they woke up worried because they're not sure in which direction to go. You're more likely to put it in your network electronically in the middle of the night than you are to say, "I really want to sign up for that course, I really want to sign up for that seminar, or I'm going to go to that SBA program," because most of the time you would have to commit a whole day, and my experience with entrepreneurs is they don't want to go to events. They're very protective of their time. So I think you're absolutely right about the mentoring part. And while we unfortunately don't have the resources and the capacity to create that, we do everything we can to connect people to those mentoring resources and networks that are available. I know that Kauffman has something called "Give Back" where they ask entrepreneurs to give back with their time and they connect entrepreneurs.
More and more communities are concentrating on this and I think it's a phenomenal thing to do. I believe it's critical to mix disciplines, and it's very important to not have people just think on a vertical basis. However, with mentorship, I think there's a great deal to be gained from a mentor being someone who actually has the knowledge of your particular business. As we all know, running an airline is very different from running a fast food store. I think that certain issues are good to open up and talk about vertically, but I think it helps to have a mentor who has a background in your specific field. I think that tapping into people who are recently retired is possibly the most valuable of all. They have the time, they have the experience, and they don't have the baggage of having a conflict of interest. So that's a little bit on mentoring.
SM: With regards to the organization, are there local chapters of this or are you looking to set up a local chapter?
JO: Unfortunately, no. We do have what we call regional coordinators but we don't have one here at this time. What we are doing is sharing our experience with other communities, sharing our experience of this particular knowledge base and the players within that space with Congresswoman Gillibrand. She really would like to help me get set up and started, and then I think she would like to try and take the lead on this. The problem for elected officials is that they're only guaranteed to be around for two years, but we think they are very valuable, particularly if they "get it," and she is young enough that she gets the economy. So if they get it, we think elected officials can be great because they are tied to the local region, and they have that global dimension. She can call up CEOs all over the country and get a return phone call. We think they've got that unique quality.
SM: Well she's different, too. She's the new kid on the block and she'll do things that are progressive and new. With regards to setting it up regionally, I'm sure that she has her ideas as to who that person is going to be.
JO: It's very interesting because I come from a non-political background, I'm an American citizen, but I grew up in England, and I can be fairly colorblind about the politics and the community, but it is kind of intriguing. I was assuming the Republicans would be more passionate about it than Democrats. Interestingly enough, right now this is about innovation. The new economy entrepreneurship is a kind of different animal and it has not become something that I want. I mean there are certain things in there that you might care about saying, "Well, generally speaking, maybe it's a good thing to have lower taxes" but those aren't really the key things that will make or break an entrepreneur. I mean, they would be nice but you know both Republicans and Democrats agree that they have to do something about healthcare because otherwise it's going to strangle entrepreneurs as far as benefits. So that gives me room for sort of encouragement. I like it when it's less of a political hot topic.
SM: Here the new entrepreneurs are different animals. A lot of people are leaving, so there's a lack of quality in the labor force. Even though there are five major universities here, and other smaller ones like Hudson Valley or Adirondack Community College, it's tough to get good quality people.
JO: Well, you know, this is a critical area. It's going to be about talent, and it's going to be about how you can use your magazine to educate the region about your mentoring and incubator programs. So it's about talent, it's about changing cultures, and it's about research institutions. Even places like RPI and MIT are not doing as well as they could do in terms of allowing many of the ideas from these companies to emerge.
SM: They think they are.
JO: Oh yeah, and it's not that they are not doing a good job; they are. I'm looking at 80% of the innovative capacity and it's all defragmented because they have the tendency to silence any institution, university, government agency or big company. It's about talent, it's about the individuals, and it's about finding ways to enable the individuals to cross-fertilize. It's what I call interdisciplinary stuff, and it's very, very important. It's about moving the innovations into the markets, it's about the talent, it's about unleashing the entrepreneurship potential, and that's in terms of getting people to idea recognition and allowing people to take it to the big scale. Of course, it's about all of that and the smart ways that it enhances the community. In my mind there is no such thing as social entrepreneurship since all entrepreneurship is social. Every business founded is supposed to be there to make life easier for the citizens around it, and that can't be done in a way that is not enhancing sustainability. So I think we kind of pick these themes quite deliberately to say, "Here are some areas that a region could really focus on if it wants to maximize its potential to organically strengthen its culture and economy."
For more info visit:
|
