Companies such as Apple Computer, America On Line, Intel Corporation and Sun Microsystems were all financed by small business investment companies during their initial growth. In addition to encouraging their initial founding, it is also important to encourage firms to survive and grow. Often their success is based on an innovative idea in marketing or distribution, with the technique of franchising spreading the risk and thus helping the firms expand quickly with less capital accumulation. Small businesses have been given further stimulus as a result of the Clinton Administration's Reinvention of Government initiative. Procedures have been simplified, unnecessary regulations have been abolished for small businesses, and one-stop shopping has been instituted for obtaining licenses, filing forms, and the like.
Assistance is even available to help navigate the thicket of regulations which do remain.
At the state level, tax holidays, offers of specially trained workers, and other incentives are used to attract new investment to a state. For instance, a Swedish journalist who visited the U.S. recently was quite amazed to observe South Carolina competing against Ohio to attract Japanese investment. That is the rapidly expanding number of partnerships among universities, government, and private business. These partnerships foster a culture of collaboration and an exchange of ideas which in turn produces its own dynamism, innovation and synergy. Going back to John Doerr's win-win situation again, such partnerships produce significant amounts of earned income from patents and royalties for the universities, as well as income for new companies which spin off from the successful transfer of research information.