Posted on 06/14/2007 6:54:43 AM PDT by fmkl
Ninety-six percent of immigrant founders of technology and engineering companies between 1995 and 2005 held bachelor's degrees, and 74 percent held graduate or postgraduate degrees, according to a study the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation released Monday.
Seventy-five percent of the highest degrees among immigrant entrepreneurs were in science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields, the Kauffman Foundation said in a release. Fifty-three percent of the immigrant founders of U.S.-based technology and engineering companies completed their highest degrees in U.S. universities. <A HREF="http://dc.bizjournals.com/event.ng/Type=click&FlightID=21264&AdID=30521&TargetID=1292&Segments=1,16,973,2183,3301,3622,3862,4117,4263,4611,4614,4829&Targets=3394,61,1292,2014,3078,3381,3619,3866,4009,4337,4344,4550&Values=25,30,46,50,60,72,84,93,100,110,150,155,202,295,333,473,565,736,775,830,872,894,949,951,959,960,961,962,980,994,996,997,1009&RawValues=GEOMAJORMETRO%2Corange%2520county%2CDOMAINTYPE%2C25%2CST_VERT_TOPIC%2Creal_estate__commercial&Redirect=http://www.tivol.com" target="_top"><IMG SRC="http://ll.bizjournals.com/ads/dc/tivol/Tivol_Cube_300_x_250_v3.gif" WIDTH=300 HEIGHT=250 BORDER=0></A>
Researchers at Duke University and the University of California-Berkeley conducted the study, which included a series of in-depth interviews with:
• 144 immigrant company founders on their educational attainment, degree types, reasons for entering the United States and other factors related to their entrepreneurial activities
• 87 Indian, 57 Chinese and 29 Taiwanese company founders to ask where they received their undergraduate education
• 1,572 companies in 11 technology centers to determine whether a key founder was foreign-born and the founder's country of birth.
Nationwide, immigrant-founded companies produced $52 billion in sales and employed 450,000 workers in 2005. The majority of these immigrant entrepreneurs came from India, United Kingdom, China, Taiwan, Japan and Germany.
"Our research confirms that advanced education in science, technology, engineering and math is correlated with high rates of entrepreneurship and innovation," lead researcher Vivek Wadhwa, executive in residence, Pratt School of Engineering, Master of Engineering Management Program at Duke University, said in the release. "The U.S. economy depends on these high rates of entrepreneurship and innovation to maintain its global edge."
Among the study's findings:
• More than half of the foreign-born founders of U.S. technology and engineering businesses initially came to the United States to study. Very few came with the sole purpose of starting a company. Almost 40 percent of immigrant founders entered the country because of a job opportunity, with only 1.6 percent entering the country with the sole purpose of entrepreneurship. They typically founded companies after working and residing in the United States for an average of 13 years.
• Immigrant founders were educated in a diverse set of universities in both their home countries and across the United States. No single U.S. institution stands out as a source of immigrant founders. Similarly, those who received their undergraduate degrees in India or China graduated from a diverse assortment of institutions. Even the famed Indian Institutes of Technology educated only 15 percent of Indian technology and engineering company founders.
• Immigrant entrepreneurs tend to move to cosmopolitan technology centers. The regions with the largest immigrant population also tend to have the greatest number of technology startups. On average, 31 percent of the engineering and technology companies founded from 1995 to 2005 in the 11 technology centers that were surveyed had an immigrant as a key founder. This compares with the national average of 25.3 percent.
• Technology centers with a greater concentration of immigrant entrepreneurs in their state averages include Silicon Valley (52.4 percent), New York City (43.8 percent) and Chicago (35.8 percent). Three technology centers had a below-average rate of immigrant-founded companies: Portland, Ore. (17.8 percent), Research Triangle Park (18.7 percent) and Denver (19.4 percent).
More information about the study is available on the Kauffman Foundation's Web site.
When it comes to issues of culture and ethnicity, most folks on this site, I hate to say, are stuck in tunnell vision.
Interesting you should judge it by pop culture. I would argue the same pop cultural trends are popular in the home country. Is there any kid on the planet who isn’t into hip-hop?
Hasidim good example of a very insular group.
http://www.rtoonline.com/Content/Article/Aug_06/HispanicMarketingLanguagePreference081606.asp
http://www.nshp.org/hispanic_business/young_hispanics_overwhelmingly_prefer_english_media
http://news.ucanr.org/latinobriefs/latinobriefs.cfm?story=139
Next time you’re in the Apple check out the Soho Grand or Maritime on a Friday night. Most amazing scenes. All international kids in their 20s. It’s like the UN with very expensive drinks.
True, but it is IMPOSSIBLE to TRULY maintain the home country in the face of mass media, social dislocation, etc.
While much of what you observe is so, it is a huge mistake to confuse the street life of the U.S. with anything approaching traditional culture.
I don’t expect everyone to act like Ward Cleaver. Personally, I find all low-brow American culture to be disgusting, but it seems to transcend race/ethnicity, unfortunately.
Then what is the measure of an American, as we call ourselves?
I never bought into the notion of multi-cultural. I don’t believe it exists, particularly for young people. Kids in Brooklyn will play in a band on a Friday night and email or post songs from the set to their friends in Italy, and it’ll play in a club in Milan on Saturday night.
We’re moving towards a uni-cultural world.
I don’t expect everyone to act like Ward Cleaver.
But he talked to the Beaver....what would all the little Beavers do without him?
I would like to add preserving our constitutional Republic, but it seems that only 10% of our population even UNDERSTANDS the concept, let alone is interested in preserving it.
There is an overriding sense of "Americaness" that most folks can't articulate it, but they live it everyday of their life. Underneath this overriding identity, are various subcultures, including hip hoppers, rednecks, secular urbanism, and fundamentalist protestantism, among others. All of these are as American as pineapple on a pizza.
There’s lowbrow culture everywhere, even in high class areas like Palm Beach.
I would agree if it weren’t for the persistence of poverty in the world, the persistence of large rural populations (alhtough this is changing, most notably in Latin America and Asia, the key factor behind the decline in birthrates in those regions), and the continued stranglehold of strong religious belief, particularly in the Islamic world.
Secular urbanism; that’s enough to pop my pineapple.
An argument could be made that those folks are irrelevant —”wards of the global state”
I haven’t reached that conclusion, but the argument could be made.
Well, strictly speaking, pizza isn’t “American” either.:)
A growing share of the population, even in places like Virginia, North Carolina, and, dare I say, Tennessee? Its the price we pay for the expansion of higher education and the pill, I guess.
Good gracious, poverty is the natural state of man; it is only our innate sense of the future that allows us to lift ourselves from its grasp.
Too many think we must gather up all the rest similarly situated and when we try, we all slip back.
Urban environments operate best when “secular.”
BTW: Its a myth that pizza was invented in the US. The first pizzas in Naples, however, were tomatoes, basil, and garlic, no cheese.
Don't get me started on the folks who still believe that old wive's tale about Marco Polo discovering pasta in China. The tomatoes for the sauce, of course, came originally from South America.
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