Should Governments just get out of the way?
Written on October 24, 2007 by Conor O'Neill
Whilst I’ve had a lot of conversations with other start-ups about how the Government can help entrepreneurs more, I’ve also had a few with those who think it should do less.
One of those, an ex-pat Irish Angel, whose thoughts we hope to be able to share with a wider audience in the coming weeks, sent me this link to an article in The Economist.
The Fading Lustre of Clusters.
Well worth a read.
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Yes, but lets not forget that DARPA bootstrapped most what now counts as Silicon Valley by pouring literally billions of dollars into IT in the 70’s and 80’s (when a billion dollars was really something to crow about).
The EU tried to duplicate DARPA’s success with Esprit, but screwed it up in the classically bureaucratic way the the EU often does.
I think what made DARPA a success was they just paid for research and this typically went straight into the Universities, which is where we got the likes of Stanford and MIT. Give a Uni a 100m dollar research budget and you get some pretty funky research.
In Ireland and the rest of the EU we agonise about handing out pennies in comparison.
So, yes I think governments have a part to play, but if its a bit part they probably shouldn’t bother.
I can c both sides of the coin and like most things there is NO MAGIC ANSWER. There are pro’s and con’s on both sides.
Most goverments that offer assistance get TOO embroiled in the process, management, choosing, coaching etc..
Those that do nothing often do offer “some” help; tax incentives 4 startups or SME’s, incentives for investment, low loan rates etc.
I believe its a happy medium where u create the right structure to help/coach/prod … but (at this is the hard part) .. just enough…
Lal
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