By the ‘conventional wisdom’ that has prevailed in Hollywood over the last decade, The Hurt Locker should have been (quietly) happy to merely have been nominated for several Oscars and serve as grist for the mill that would have recognized the mega-production that is Avatar. After all, it was James Cameron’s previous uber movie (Titanic - 1997) that garnered 14 nominations; ultimately walking away with 11 awards including best picture and best director.

But it was Hurt Locker Director Kathryn Bigelow’s uncompromising approach to produce a movie that was true to her (and other key staff) vision to be a genuine depiction of what our service men and women are dealing with in the Middle East that walked away with most of the big awards this year.

In her tenacity to make this film, she had to overcome many obstacles; the kind of obstacles that have killed countless worthy projects. In fact, she pushed forward during a time when the industry was running to safe waters of sequels, tired formulas of teen angst, weak comedies, and comic book characters.

Whether she intended to or not, she demonstrated many of the common characteristics of successful entrepreneurs. And those who took a chance on her (author Mark Boal and Summit Entertainment for example) participated in similar support roles that most entrepreneurial success ventures have in common – from key advisor to angel investor.

And so it is, even in the film industry, that one can find entrepreneurs taking calculated risks, challenging the status quo, and finding new markets where others dared not. In my humble opinion, and as someone who has served in the military, the praise for this film was worthy - worthy for its entrepreneurial success and for an unflinching depiction of what our service men and women are enduring as an extension of our nation’s foreign policy; right or wrong.

As Kathryn Bigelow acknowledged in her acceptance speech, let’s remember the sacrifices these brave individuals are making at the behest of their country. Let’s remember the toll these actions are having; political, financial, and human. To not remember (and learn from) these would be as un-entrepreneurial as it would be unpatriotic.

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According to a new study released today by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, the current national conversation on economic recovery would be more productively focused on creating a favorable environment for entrepreneurship—and particularly high-growth entrepreneurship—because top-performing companies are the most fertile source of new jobs.

It is an important week for entrepreneurship in the Middle East. Here in Dubai, two important global summits will be convened by His Excellency, Sheikh Nahayan Mabarak Al Nahayan, United Arab Emirates Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research, and Carl Schramm, President of the Kauffman Foundation: The HCT Global Entrepreneurship 2010 Conference (E2010) and the Kauffman Foundation’s Global Entrepreneurship Congress which I will emcee.

There is no doubt about it. The promotion of entrepreneurship as the key economic driver is a burgeoning global phenomenon. These two summits, which run parallel to each other, bring together impressive leaders in entrepreneurship from nearly 100 nations.  Later today, we will be joined here in the UAE by a long list of dignitaries from the Prime Minister of Georgia to the Duchess of York, from prominent academics to high growth startup entrepreneurs such as Tom Scott, who founded Nantucket Nectars.  Also arriving here today are the new movement leaders from nearly every one of the 88 nations participating in Global Entrepreneurship Week.  Entrepreneurship is no longer a side-show at the circus. It is increasingly being examined as the engine of new growth around the world.

The Middle East is the appropriate setting for these efforts not just because, as has been thoroughly reported, President Obama has chosen to focus on entrepreneurship in the Muslim world as one of his first forays into promoting entrepreneurship on the global stage.  It is fitting because of the region’s unwavering commitment to entrepreneurship. Our meetings here with the leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries show that when faced with high youth unemployment and new challenges to their economy, they are choosing to focus on encouraging "nations of entrepreneurs" fueled by creativity, initiative, and risk taking.

The UAE and other countries in the region are at the forefront of the global entrepreneurship movement. Throughout the Arab world, hundreds of initiatives are being launched to encourage youth to innovate and start their own enterprises. In Dubai, the Centre of Excellence for Applied Research and Training (CERT), which started in 1996 as the commercial arm of the Higher Colleges of Technology (HCT), is now the largest private education provider in the Middle East and also the largest MENA (Middle East North Africa) investor in the discovery and commercialization of technology. CERT is just one example of the exceptional work being done to advance entrepreneurship in the region. 

The focus on entrepreneurship as a tool for development in the Arab world is not necessarily new.  The U.S. State Department's Office of the Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI) has worked to encourage youth entrepreneurship in the Middle East and North Africa since 2002.  MEPI has a Regional Office in Abu Dhabi that administers MEPI local grants in Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Yemen.  What is new is the plethora of new attention to this field from existing organizations. These organizations extend beyond the traditional public sector players such as the United Nations Development Program or USAID. Programs like the Brookings Institution’s Wolfensohn Center for Development, the Aspen Institute’s 90 organization strong ANDE program, and Harvard University’s Dubai Initiative are all devoting considerable attention to the role of entrepreneurs in the development of the region.

Data suggests that these efforts are bearing fruit. The UAE ranks among the top ten global reformers in 2008/09, according World Bank’s Doing Business in the Arab World 2010 report. Gallup polls in turn revealed that except for Egypt and Yemen, majorities of young respondents in all other Arab countries surveyed perceive their local areas to be good places for entrepreneurs. In the UAE, three-quarters of young respondents say that their communities are good places to live for entrepreneurs forming new businesses. Such perceptions are similar to those expressed by young respondents in the U.S. (73%) and the U.K. (71%).

Many are planning to announce new and exciting efforts around the President’s Entrepreneurship Summit at the end of April. Look to the Policy Dialogue on Entrepreneurship (PDE) in April for an advance look at what is coming up.  In the meantime, stay tuned for future posts from me on the discussions that take place here in Dubai at the Global Entrepreneurship Congress where momentum is building towards new and exciting ways of building entrepreneurial economies with globally-focused entrepreneurs.

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Jonathan Ortmans is president of the Public Forum Institute, a non-partisan organization dedicated to fostering dialogue on important policy issues. In this capacity, he leads the Policy Dialogue on Entrepreneurship, focused on public policies to promote entrepreneurship in the U.S. and around the world. In addition, he serves as a senior fellow at the Kauffman Foundation. 

Each day, Innovation Daily checks the pulse of global innovation -- courtesy of Innovation America and its founder, Rich Bendis. Here, we take a look at a handful of relevant stories it compiled last week:   

• And Google Begat...
  (from BusinessWeek)
  
• Why CEOs Don't Get Innovation
  (from BusinessWeek)
• Why B-Schools Set Up Entrepreneurs To Fail
  (from Forbes.com)
• University of Texas Launches Campus-wide Commercialization Effort
  (from SSTI Weekly Digest)
• Enterprise 'clusters' seen as foreign springboard for SMEs
  (from EuroActive.com)
  

More than a dozen rockstar entrepreneurs and startup financiers have decided it was time to visit Washington, DC. They have taken three days of their busy schedules this week to push for the passage StartUp Visa Act of 2010, a bill that would make it easier for foreign entrepreneurs to start high growth enterprises in the U.S.

The proposed legislation, as PDE reported last week, was introduced by Senators John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) to create a new type of visa for foreign entrepreneurs looking to start businesses in the U.S, the EB-6. It would be a two-year visa available to any immigrant entrepreneur who has secured at least $250,000 in capital from accredited venture capitalists or angel investors in the U.S. After two years, EB-6 visa holders would have the option of becoming a permanent U.S. resident if his or her startup has met one of three criteria: created five full-time jobs in the U.S., raised an additional $1 million from investors, or achieved $1 million in revenue.

On Thursday afternoon, the visiting group gathered at White House Conference Center to discuss the Startup Visa with representatives from White House's Office of Science & Technology Policy, the Department of State, Department of Commerce and Department of Homeland Security. Among the audience was Aneesh Chopra, the Federal Chief Technology Officer of the United States (CTO).

The campaign leaders explained how the legislation will help the country compete for talent and create new companies that would employ American workers at a time when joblessness is rampant. Dave McClure, organizer of the trip, venture capitalist and former software entrepreneur, argued that with the Startup Visa Act the U.S. can create thousands of new jobs immediately and tens of thousands more as these new startups grow into the next Googles, Paypals, and eBays.

With regards to the initial requirement of $250,000 in capital, Brad Feld, Managing Director of Foundry Group, explained that this threshold would allow the EB-6 solution to target high growth businesses.

Among other supporters of the bill and the campaign are:
-    Shervin Pishevar, an Iranian-born entrepreneur and angel investor based in Silicon Valley.
-    Paul Graham, co-founder of Mountain View (Calif.)-based startup incubator Y Combinator.
-    Jeff Clavier, a San Francisco-based angel investor
-    David Binetti, an entrepreneur who worked to create the original USA.gov
-    Eric Ries, an entrepreneur and the author Startup Lessons Learned

Many of the VCs testified to the contribution of immigrant technology entrepreneurs to the economy. They estimated that currently over 50% of VC deals involve a foreign founder or CEO. According to these experts, a higher number and quality of entrepreneurs, foreign and national, competing for VC funds, the higher the flow of VC funds will be.

This is an impressive grassroots movement. They have no lobbyists, no campaign contributions, no PR agencies, just hundreds of supporters who want to encourage job creation and innovation in the United States. For more information on this campaign, access it website at www.startupvisa.com.

Robert Litan, vice-president of research and policy at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, has a new article explaining why the federal government should require universities receiving research grants to allow faculty inventors the right to choose their licensing agent. In this article, Litan responds to the criticism of this idea expressed by Arundeep Pradhan, the President of the Association of University Technology Managers. While Pradhan’s recent BusinesWeek.com column suggests the system is working just fine, Litan argues it could be improved through more competition:

Universities are supposed to be, and mostly are, "marketplaces of ideas." But when it comes to inventions developed by their faculty, there is only one avenue available. TLOs [Technology Licensing Office] typically assert total control over which innovations can reach the market, in what form, and how fast. In the Harvard Business Review article that Pradhan criticizes, my co-author and I proposed some modest steps to expand the avenues to commercialization. For instance, why not allow faculty members to test the waters by approaching TLOs at other schools? Or better yet, let them use independent licensing agents who may have more expertise in the inventor's technology of choice? The net result—something we believe that Pradhan wants (or should want) no less than we—would be more inventions moving more quickly to market, thereby benefiting society, the university, and the inventors.”

With regards to how to go about this, Litan explains:

We can't let pass Pradhan's claim that we somehow oppose or want to change the Bayh-Dole Act. To the contrary, we recognize—and have praised many times in the past—the important role that Bayh-Dole played in fueling the entrepreneurial economy of the last 30 years. … Far from seeking to gut Bayh-Dole, we want to make it better. And it would be better, we think, if the federal government required universities receiving research grants to allow faculty inventors the right to choose their licensing agent. The object should be the most rapid and cost-effective commercialization possible, and that end will be furthered by more competition, not less.

I recommend you read the entire BusinessWeek article, "Improving the Commercialization of University Inventions."