Two white papers feature diverse examples of university entrepreneurship instruction helping students solve real-world problems.

New business formation rebounded in 2011, after four years of decline, from the depths of the Great Recession.

With support from the Kauffman Foundation and 64 other foundation funders across the nation, the National Council on Teacher Quality undertook an exhaustive and unprecedented examination of the colleges and universities producing America’s traditionally prepared teachers.

While the rebound in job creation emerging from the Great Recession is encouraging, its rate of recovery lags well behind the pace of other recent recessions. In a paper using BDS 2011 data, “Anemic Job Creation and Growth in the Aftermath of the Great Recession: Are Home Prices to Blame?”, researchers at the University of Maryland and Census Bureau explore the relation between the decline in housing prices at the heart of this recession and job creation at young firms.

Based on interviews with local Inc. 500/5000 companies, this study found that, while the Kansas City region has many entrepreneurial strengths, those assets could be tapped further to help young companies attain even greater success.

As part of an effort to understand the dynamics of new businesses in the United States, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation sponsored the Kauffman Firm Survey (KFS), a panel study of new businesses founded in 2004 that are being tracked annually over their first eight years of operation.

The Kauffman Firm Survey started with a cohort of nearly 5,000 firms that began operations in 2004. This cohort is tracked annually and asked an extensive set of detailed questions that cover a range of topics such as the background of the founders, the sources and amounts of financing, firm strategies and innovations, and outcomes such as sales, profits, and survival. This report, with results through 2011, is the final iteration of the Kauffman Firm Survey.

The pace at which the United States produces $100-million companies has been stable over the last 20 years despite changes in the economy. However, according to this paper, the locations and sectors in which those companies are created are changing.

This study examines the particular experience of nascent academic entrepreneurs (NAEs) and the implications of this experience for universities and policymakers.

Not all startup companies are created equal. Although both innovation-driven enterprises (IDEs) and traditional small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can provide valuable products and services and create jobs, IDEs – startups focused on addressing global markets based on technological, process or business model innovation – can potentially create hundreds or even thousands of high-skill jobs if they succeed.