Social Venture Creation

For those readers who are a little more local – you may want to check out the Social Venture Creation event in Ann Arbor, Michigan on April 17th.  The event stems from a new course provided at the University of Michigan designed to help aspiring social entrepreneurs develop and launch their own socially minded businesses.  In an upcoming event that will be free and open to the public, competitors shall present their ideas to address a wide array of problems, local and abroad using new business ventures.  The ideas will be evaluated by an expert panel of University of Michigan faculty and industry experts, with prospective funding agencies also present.

Four broad topics will be covered:

- Improvement of health in the Detroit area through distribution of healthy foods

- Communal car sharing schemes to improve access to transportation and reduce environmental impact

- Software for the analysis and improvement of the distribution of health workers to foreign countries

- Engineering solutions for the delivery of high-speed internet connections to remote stations in third-world countries to improve local access to information

This event is on April 17th (Saturday), is open to the public and will take place at the Ross School of Business (room R1210) from 10am to noon.

Michigan Promotes FastTrac NewVenture Program for Small Business

Yesterday, Governor Granholm announced a number of new initiatives within Michigan to support the growth and liquidity within local small businesses.  Granholm highlighted new funding and support for the FastTrac NewVenture program, a service providing advice and 10-week courses on launching and developing new businesses.  In addition, the state government has entered agreements with the Michigan Small Business and Technology Development Centers (MI-SBTDC) and Michigan Credit Union League (MCUL) to expand credit availability to small business owners.

Obama’s State of the Union Encouraging to Some States in the Union

Obama’s State of the Union address (transcript) last night was largely a call to action across many sectors of the nation.  Although a message of change is hardly new coming from the Administration, some specific plans laid out in Obama’s speech are encouraging to small businesses and budding entrepreneurs.  In particular, Obama proposed using ~30B of the returned bank bailout money to establish a fund designed for loans to small businesses in order to increase liquidity in a sector that currently faces trouble obtaining credit from larger banking institutions.  Obama also proposed tax credits for small businesses that hire new employees, or raise the wages for existing employees during 2010.

While these plans must first traverse Congress in order to become a reality, some states are cautiously optimistic that these programs could help them recover their economies, particularly in the area of job creation.  Indeed, in Michigan, the proposed business incentives, along with Obama’s continued focus on green energy, have given some hope that 2010 may help the state combat it’s unprecedented unemployment rate (currently at ~15% in some estimates).