July 26, 2011

When we began the Guru Review back in October 2010, the intent was to keep OPEN members abreast of great business ideas from leading thinkers—the "gurus." We wanted to review books as well as important articles. Unfortunately, the sheer volume of important books published has made the latter an involuntary second thought. I want to right that wrong.

There's a great site that all small business owners and operators should have among their bookmarked favorites: ChangeThis.com, a sister site to 800CEORead.com. What's so great about ChangeThis.com is that each month they publish a handful of short (1,500-3,000 word) "manifestos" submitted by high profile individuals such OPEN Forum experts Guy Kawasaki and Scott Belsky. These manifestos are in pdf format, free and freely sharable under a Creative Commons License. Frequently, they are an abbreviated or core message of a recently published book, penned by the author, and far more digestible than the entire book.

There is an important manifesto that was just posted that falls into this category, called What If They Listened to Entrepreneurs? by Henry R. Nothhaft, the coauthor of recently published Great Again: Revitalizing America’s Entrepreneurial Leadership.

Nothhaft has been a high-tech entrepreneur and CEO for more than 35 years, and in that time he's created more than 6,000 jobs and returned $8 billion to investors. He helped grow the first commercial Internet company (Telenet) in the 1970s, helped develop the first voice mail and voice-data networks in the 1980s, and in the 1990s, led one of America’s largest Internet service providers to a multimillion-dollar IPO and then a 2.5 billion-dollar sale to XO Communications. He was CEO of a company called Danger that developed the first popular smartphone with social networking capability, branded the T-Mobile Sidekick, and which was sold to Microsoft in 2008 for $500 million dollars. The last company he led, Tessera, is at the forefront of new semiconductor miniaturization technologies that enable the creation of ever-smaller cameras, cell phones and other electronic devices.

That backstory gives his manifesto real credibility. It's a quick read, and I liked it so much I have decided to purchase and read the book.

Big idea:

Before any significant and sustained increase in the creation of good middle-class jobs can take place, the voice of the entrepreneur who is the source of all breakthrough innovation and job growth must be heard.

Key takeaways:

The key takeaways for me were "why-to's" not "how-to's" in support of Nothhaft's premise, and rather surprising:

• Entrepreneurial startups are the sole source of net new job growth in the U.S. Literally 100 percent of it.

• Virtually all economic growth and increases in living standards stem from breakthrough technological innovation, and the only force in society that actually creates those breakthrough innovations—the kind that give birth to whole new industries and millions of new jobs—are small entrepreneurial startups. (Apple may develop very creative new products, but over the last 200 years, the breakthrough inventions that gave rise to whole new industries and millions of new jobs were all made by entrepreneurial startups.)

• "Given the above," writes Nothhaft, "one would think that if the target of national policy is job creation, then policy makers would obviously want to focus the bulls-eye of that policy on startups.

• But one would be wrong. Because against all logic and common sense, time and again policy makers in both parties consistently aim their job creation policies at the wrong target. Take President Obama. Earlier this year, he convened a summit of 20 of the nation’s top CEOs to discuss ways to create more jobs. A month later, he appointed General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt to chair a new president’s council on jobs and competitiveness. As one wag noted about the president’s jobs summit, the guest list was 'a who’s who of outsourcing American jobs.'"

• The U.S Patent & Trademark Office is the only fully self-supporting arm of the entire federal government, to which taxpayers contribute not one single penny, yet Congress treats it like a petty cash drawer. The result is a patent office with a backlog of 1.2 million patents, which is costing the U.S., in the words of patent office director David Kappos, "Millions. Millions of jobs."

• In addition to fixing the patent office, suggestions for solutions include policy reform in these key areas (which Nothhaft promises to explore in the full book): tax policies and regulations, manufacturing policies, immigration policies, and refocusing governmental attention on funding of research and development as a means of encouraging startups.

• Nothhaft concludes: "The voice of the entrepreneur who is the source of all breakthrough innovation and job growth must be heard. Sadly, however, entrepreneurs are just about the only Americans without a voice in Washington. Big Business certainly has a voice. So does labor, as do teachers, retailers, insurers, doctors, environmentalists and just about every interest group you can think of. Only entrepreneurs lack an effective organized voice. Bottom line, I think it’s time Washington started listening to the voice of the startup entrepreneur who creates wealth, not the Wall Street trader who merely manipulates it."

Liked most:

Seldom do we see such clearly articulated and forcefully substantiated arguments. Nothhaft's insight, passion, intelligence and practicality is to be admired. It's one of the most compelling and vital things I've read in quite a while, and if this manifesto is an indication of the larger book, I look forward to immersing myself in an utterly engaging experience.

Best for...

Every entrepreneur, would-be entrepreneur, small business owner and startup hopeful. Download the manifesto now, read it, and share it so it goes viral. With any luck, it'll make it's way to Washington D.C.

Related Topics

• Innovation

Related keywords

Matthew E. May, Article, innovation, jobs growth, business books, entrepreneurs, guru review, Henry R. Rofhat

Join the conversation ( 1 )

• MBA Depot 9 months ago

  

  I have long believed that business articles don't get the attention they deserve. Often the content of a business book can, and sometimes is, better presented in a long-form article than a full book. I have been hand-selecting my favorite business articles at MBA Depot for more than 10 years, and I have read every single ChangeThis manifesto. If you're just discovering this site thanks to Matthew May, check out http://www.mbadepot.com/search/keyword/ChangeThis to see the 49 that I personally find worth reading for learning value, including Mr. May's own manifestos, "Elegant Solutions: Breakthrough Thinking the Toyota Way" and "Mind of the Innovator: Taming the Traps of Traditional Thinking." You will also find 66 quotations pulled from various manifestos, including this gem by Mr. May: "Great innovation is great in large part because of context. Context separates invention from innovation. Context is like the frame in art. If the canvas doesn't fit the frame, the whole thing doesn't quite work."