OCRI's CEO Bruce Lazenby in Ottawa Citizen: Startups the key to tech Ottawa's success
November 28, 2011 By Nathan Rudyk
In today's Ottawa Citizen, Bruce Lazenby, OCRI's President & CEO, laid a out game-plan for Ottawa's tech sector that doesn't involve more government studies, wishful waiting for scarce venture capital (been doing any reading lately on the global credit crisis?) or reliance on 90s-era "critical mass" companies.
Instead, Lazeby advises "a laserlike focus on Ottawa’s entrepreneurs, their startups, and our ability to rapidly accelerate the success of those young companies."
He cites data from the Kauffman Foundation, the world's largest institution devoted to entrepreneurship, that has done exhaustive research on the true sources of sustainable job creation. From today's article:
In 2010, Tim Kane, a Kauffman senior fellow, analyzed a U.S. data set called Business Dynamics Statistics.
His conclusion? "Startups aren't everything when it comes to job growth. They're the only thing."
Kane's research shows that from 1977 to 2005, existing companies lost one million net jobs per year. On the other hand, startups in their first year added an average of three million jobs annually.
When you look at old versus new companies, this revelation on the power of startups is even more interesting. Gross job creation at startups averaged more than three million jobs per year during 1992-2005, four times higher than older companies. Counter to the prevailing wisdom of 20 years ago when big was beautiful, older firms on the whole experience job losses that are larger than job gains.
So Ottawa, let's embrace the beauty of our startups.
Please read Bruce's full article here: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/business/Small+beautiful+Ottawa+tech+sector/5776149/story.html#ixzz1f0fUFUTH
(Nathan Rudyk is President and CEO with market2world communications inc., the public relations and product marketing agency for global innovators.)