In a recent international conference in Istanbul, Usama Fayyad, Executive Chairman of the Jordan-based Oasis500 business accelerator, said: "It is not about creating jobs. It is about creating new companies." The simple concept and the explanation that followed made me realize: Usama, along with many others in the Middle East and North Africa facing a monumental challenge of unemployment, understands something that we in Washington are still struggling with: the solution to our unemployment challenge will not come from existing large companies hiring more employees. Rather, it will come from the creation of new small and medium businesses. While this concept seems obvious, it bears repeating.
Small and medium businesses (fewer than 500 employees) account for 52 percent of all U.S. workers. Small firms accounted for 65 percent (or 9.8 million) of the 15 million net new jobs created between 1993 and 2009 in the United States. No doubt, the sentiment expressed in Istanbul holds true throughout the rest of the world.
To read the full, original article click on this link: Mickey Bergman: Not Jobs -- Create New Companies
