Buzz Archive:
Supporting Venture Innovation: Venture Capital Drives U.S. Competitiveness

by Joseph W. Bartlett, Founder of VC Experts.com, 12/6/2007

There is one safe core assumption about the future of U.S. economic prosperity: Without our nation's robust venture capital-backed, entrepreneur-driven, tech-flavored industries and services, which are today still largely unique to the United States, our country is an also ran, its global influence, power, and leadership fated to diminish over the course of the 21st century.

That said, monopolies never last forever. Our clear lead in what I call the EVITA economy—Entrepreneurial, Venture-backed, Information-dependent, Technology-flavored Activity—now faces rising competitive challenges from global competitors—a natural, inevitable, and, of course, healthy phenomenon. Indeed, the good news is that an innovation-led global economy is certain to prosper exponentially, in this country and globally, given the tsunami of explosive advances in science and technology the world is currently experiencing.

Unfortunately, serious (and unhealthy) challenges to the bedrock of our nation's entrepreneurial, innovation-led economy—start-up technology companies of all stripes—threaten to limit our economy's ability to remain hyper-competitive across a range of existing and emerging high-technology industries and services. The reasons are manifold but largely stem from unintended consequences resulting from the insufficient allocation of financial and human capital and misguided policymaking. The following essay will first define our EVITA economy and then suggest a blueprint for future U.S. economic policy designed to grow innovative new tech companies intelligently and productively, yielding benefits that are socially positive, widely distributed, and fairly allocated.