Entrepreneurship unpredictable but alive
The Monday NYT had an article in the business section with the title "Anxious App Developers Are in a Scramble to Strike iPad Gold". What was described was the thriving business of designing applications for Apple products and the rush by many, using one example of two brothers, to be among the first to have their products up and running for the iPad. This is a big business that a few years ago didn't exist.
News here was that the Apple online store already has 150,000 applications on sale for the iPhone. The two brothers described had, using some quick math, netted around $2.5 million on a game application for the iPhone that had been up for just over one year. Obviously they wanted to adapt it to the iPad as quickly as possible. That is a staggering number for two guys working in jeans and t-shirts with almost no overhead. As an aside they are from Croatia, one still lives there, and the other in a Chelsea apartment here in New York.
The point of writing about this is to remark on how the opportunities for entrepreneurship that arise from our technology, media, and communications based new world are unpredictable and almost limitless in their differing forms. That the U.S. remains the epicenter of this creativity for now is something that could upend the negativity that pervades our economy today in ways that economists, market analysts, government bureaucrats, and statisticians can't foresee.
The one major impediment to this, widely written about but dodged so far by our dysfunctional Congress, is the need to change some of the Bush barriers to immigration by highly creative people from all over the world. These barriers were put in place in some post 9/11 frenzy as well as in a save American jobs impulse by others. You know, recreating the past, "Sir, you say your name is Sergey Brin and you want clearance to live and work in the United States, but what are you looking to do. You say software engineer and systems development. Well sir, I'm sorry but an American can do that job." And would Google now be based in Russia, France, India, or South Korea?
Two points --- first,that immigration reform needs to be addressed and second, our optimistic side needs to be reminded that the U.S. still has the potential to be the major growth driven economy again in ways that we can't foretell. One certainty is that the growth will not be based on the structural model of the 20th century.
News here was that the Apple online store already has 150,000 applications on sale for the iPhone. The two brothers described had, using some quick math, netted around $2.5 million on a game application for the iPhone that had been up for just over one year. Obviously they wanted to adapt it to the iPad as quickly as possible. That is a staggering number for two guys working in jeans and t-shirts with almost no overhead. As an aside they are from Croatia, one still lives there, and the other in a Chelsea apartment here in New York.
The point of writing about this is to remark on how the opportunities for entrepreneurship that arise from our technology, media, and communications based new world are unpredictable and almost limitless in their differing forms. That the U.S. remains the epicenter of this creativity for now is something that could upend the negativity that pervades our economy today in ways that economists, market analysts, government bureaucrats, and statisticians can't foresee.
The one major impediment to this, widely written about but dodged so far by our dysfunctional Congress, is the need to change some of the Bush barriers to immigration by highly creative people from all over the world. These barriers were put in place in some post 9/11 frenzy as well as in a save American jobs impulse by others. You know, recreating the past, "Sir, you say your name is Sergey Brin and you want clearance to live and work in the United States, but what are you looking to do. You say software engineer and systems development. Well sir, I'm sorry but an American can do that job." And would Google now be based in Russia, France, India, or South Korea?
Two points --- first,that immigration reform needs to be addressed and second, our optimistic side needs to be reminded that the U.S. still has the potential to be the major growth driven economy again in ways that we can't foretell. One certainty is that the growth will not be based on the structural model of the 20th century.
posted by John Borden at 11:11 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home