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Economic stimulus plan

How About an Innovation Stimulus Plan?

Posted by on 06 March 2009
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Reid Hoffman, founder and chief executive of LinkedIn, writes in yesterday's Newsday about Innovation and the need for its own Stimulus plan. He writes, products and services drive a healthy economy. To translate the stimulus into long-term growth, we need incentives for business innovators. Entrepreneurs are the fertile soil for job growth and recovery.

Small companies represent 99.7 percent of all employers, generating 60 to 80 percent of net new jobs annually over the past decade. He continues, President Barack Obama should take a page from his campaign playbook. Why stop at tapping the grass roots to debate the stimulus? He should seek to fund innovation at the grass-roots level.

Obama is familiar with using YouTube and social networks - products of start-ups and tools of the people. His administration should make it a point not only to avoid propping up failing, overleveraged institutions but to finance new businesses, back promising ventures, welcome the best foreign minds and nurture native talent. We can innovate our way out of this recession.

What do you think of Hoffman's thoughts?

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