Monday, September 24, 2012

Enterprenueral Migrants

 

Europe's culture is deeply inhospitable to entrepreneurs and immigrants, with the eurozone crises there is a new element of faith in innovation and entrepreneurship while immigrants are still seen as a threat to European jobs.

With popular political statements such as:
"British Jobs for the British People"
"70% French Tax on the Wealthy Entrepreneur"

Although Finland and Switzerland are one of the most productive nations and Germany is just one of the very few countries to have a trade surplus with China, not a lot is attributed to innovation an entrepreneurship.

Here are some interesting facts:
  • Over 19% of the recent U.S patents were issued to immigrants alone, or to immigrants collaborating with U.S.-born co-inventors. These patents generated more than 1,600 jobs.
  • Over 40% of Fortune 500 companies operating in 2010 were founded by immigrants or their children, including Apple, IBM, Disney, Pfizer, Intel, AT&T, Dupont and McDonalds. The companies noted in this study had combined revenues of $4.2 trillion — more than the GDP of most countries.
  • Over 23% (114) of the companies on the list were founded by children of immigrants; these include Citigroup, Walgreens, UPS, Office Depot, H.J. Heinz and others.

Half of the world's skilled migrants go to U.S and in the past two decades, they have created 25% of all American venture-backed companies.

"BRAINS" Act, an immigration bill to make an additional 55,000 green cards available each year to foreign-born graduates of American universities, if they have advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering or math (STEM) fields.

Blueseed has plans for a floating city 12miles from Silicon Valley where migrant entrepreneurs and workers can stay on international waters.

Over 500 start-ups with French founders in the San Francisco Bay area.
Over 50,000 Germans in Silicon Valley

last year and perhaps for some time to come China has the highest entrepreneurial migrants to U.S

So why bet on entrepreneurship when we know for a fact that.
  • Just 30% of start-ups live past 10 years.
  • Fewer than 10% grow.
  • Only 3% grow substantially.
This means most entrepreneurs are destined to fail, so there's a high cost underlying successful enterprise.

In other words, poor leadership is causing much more entrepreneurial failure than success.

What can we learn from Immigrants and how can we be great Leaders?

Immigrants have three fundamental ideologies.
Unleash Your Passion
Look for Opportunities Everywhere
Work With a Generous Purpose
Entrepreneurs start from that place we call Heart, inner passion and desire that is not easily malleable, but turning that passion into a business reality requires guts. It takes Guts to get past those worries, to persevere when the going gets tough, and to adapt when circumstances demand it.

Guts are about having the courage to initiate, endure, and evolve around an idea.

A great leader may outsource accounting skills, but he never outsources relationship skills.

"When you grow up you tend to get told the world is the way it is... Try to have a nice family life, have fun, set aside a little money. That's a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you learn one simple fact, and that is - everything around you, were made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it." - Steve Jobs

Unleash your Passion and see you at the Top.