Ambassador
Speech at "Young Enterprise" Event
April 26, 2007
Mr. Minister, Mr. Clausen, distinguished guests, and future successful entrepreneurs from Young Enterprise.
It's an honor for me to be with you today.
Also like to thank Young Enterprise Chairman Jørgen Mads Clausen for inviting me to attend your competition and to speak to about the importance of innovation and the entrepreneurial spirit to the future business leaders of Denmark.
I was thrilled to learn about Young Enterprise and its association with Junior Achievement in the United States.
Junior Achievement is a great organization in the United States which has been around since 1916, and recently had its 50 millionth all-time member join the organization.
Junior Achievement is active in schools all over America, and some very successful American entrepreneurs were active in Junior Achievement as students.
People like Mark Cuban, a guy who made a fortune in internet sports broadcasting and used some of the earnings to buy the NBA team the Dallas Mavericks.
People like Fred Deluca, the man who started the hugely successful Subway fast food restaurant franchise business, or Dick DeVos who built Amway into a multi-billion dollar home marketing empire that is active throughout the world.
So my first message to the Young Enterprise students here today is that you have already taken an important step toward starting a successful business future by joining up with Young Enterprise.
Your Young Enterprise colleagues and mentors are your first business network, and you have already learned some important business lessons in preparing your business cases for this competition.
You have also gotten a good start in your business career because Young Enterprise and Junior Achievement teach young people about the value of innovation and entrepreneurship.
I think these two things are the most important in determining winners and losers in our highly competitive business environment.
An American author named Stephen Shapiro, who writes about business issues, defined innovation and innovative people in the following way:
"Innovation is not invention. Invention is the process of discovering things that have never been discovered before. Innovation is the discovery of new ways of creating value. Not everyone can be an inventor, but everyone can be innovative. The popular myth is that some people are born innovative, and some are not. But that is totally wrong. It's all a matter of degree. Each person has the potential to be innovative -- perhaps not quite as much as Mozart, but innovative nonetheless."
Steve Jobs, the guy who turned the personal computer world on its head with his line of Apple computers, is even more direct when he talks about innovation, saying that "innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower."
And he should know.
When Apple's computer business – itself a pioneer of innovation in the personal computer field – began to lose major market share a few years ago, Jobs and his company quickly branched into a different but tangentially related field to change the way that the world listens to music by launching the IPod portable music player.
Twelve years ago, what passed as portable music came in the form of a 10-kilo boom-box cassette player that ran on a dozen double A batteries, or a somewhat less bulky Walkman with large, heavy earphones.
Today, a sleek, attractively-designed machine scarcely larger than a thick credit card emits high-quality sound through ultra-light earbuds.
And, because the IPod requires a computer to download music, the product rejuvenated Apple's core personal computer business.
That is innovation in practice.
The second factor that often determines winners and losers in business is the entrepreneurial spirit.
What is entrepreneurship and who exactly is an entrepreneur? My favorite answer to the latter question comes from Ted Turner, the founder of the CNN news channel.
When someone asked him about his son's employment after college graduation, Ted Turner replied with a wry smile that: "My son is now an 'entrepreneur'. That's what you're called when you don't have a job."
Ted Turner can get away with jokes like that because he himself is a fabulously successful entrepreneur who against considerable odds managed to build a television network that literally redefined broadcast news through his creative ideas and his willingness to take the risks necessary to transform his ideas into reality.
This is the true meaning of entrepreneurship.
Entrepreneurship is a topic that has been of particular interest to me while serving in this post since I had to divest myself of seven businesses that I started in the US as a result of our conflict of interest laws.
It is also of interest to me because Denmark, the country to which I am accredited as American Ambassador, has a long and proud legacy of entrepreneurship.
The entrepreneurial spirit can be found throughout the world.
The Nobel Committee awarded this year's Nobel Peace Prize to a man named Muhammad Yunus for his work in promoting entrepreneurship among poor and often illiterate Bangladeshis through a micro credit program.
Dr. Yunus visited Copenhagen awhile back and told some remarkable stories about how loans as small as 200 Danish Kroner from his bank turned beggars into businesspeople and provided dignity and confidence to long-oppressed villagers.
While I agree with Dr. Yunus' contention that the entrepreneurial spirit is a universal trait, I also believe that in America, the role of the entrepreneur in society and the relationship of the entrepreneur to our culture is something unique.
Why?
Because in America, the entrepreneur is king, and he or she is king for the following reasons.
One, Americans generally believe one of the most important roles of the government is to foster innovation and entrepreneurship.
Two , America rewards risk. Americans love those who give it a try, and we celebrate the attempt more than we punish the failure. A business failure is not the end of a person’s career, but rather just another chapter in one's professional development.
We admire those who pull themselves up and move on.
Carl Schramm, the “evangelist of entrepreneurship” who heads the Kauffman Foundation in the United States, said on a recent trip to Copenhagen that "in Silicon Valley it is easier to get funding the second time around, after you have failed once.”
The final key to America as the “land of the entrepreneur”: America celebrates its heroes, and entrepreneurs are considered heroes.
Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen told me a story that illustrates just how much Americans revere entrepreneurs when I met him at Lego’s headquarters in Billund last year. Kjeld Kirk told me that over the years fans and customers of Lego’s products have created product conferences and tradeshows where adults, using Lego bricks, gather to showcase their latest impressive creations.
He described two recent such shows. One in Berlin, and one in Washington, DC.
In Berlin, he said, when he and his senior executives arrived at the conference they were treated as just another guest in the room. Nothing special, nothing unique.
He contrasted that with the experience in Washington where, upon his arrival, the 2,000 adult customers who were gathered there treated him as a rock star, as a celebrity, as a hero; gathering around, taking photographs, seeking autographs.
He says when he goes to America for a show like this he knows how Elvis Presley must have felt.
I will end my remarks by saying that the Young Enterprise students will be entering the business world at a good time.
In Denmark and elsewhere in Europe, among young people, “entrepreneurship” is now accorded higher status than has traditionally been the case.
The Danish government is taking the needed steps to stimulate innovation, looking at policies to increase R & D investment, by investing in programs to spur small business growth, and by forming partnerships with innovators and entrepreneurs and capitalists in America.
Statistics show that the entrepreneurial spirit is on the rise in Denmark: in the two-year period between 2003 and 2005, the number of new Danish companies doubled, and the trend continues today.
And my hope is that all of you here today will continue that trend of rising entrepreneurship in Denmark.
Don't be afraid to dream big dreams and to take risks to make those dreams become reality.
Thank you for letting me be with you today.
And, good luck.