Minority Business Success: Refocusing on The American Dream

• inadequate education; • difficulties in securing funding for their businesses; and • limited access to mainstream supply chain opportunities. The

new paradigm that will integrate and refocus the efforts of corporations, public-sector agencies, and support organizations. And we need strong leadership to ensure

The national problem is the steady decline of national competitive advantage in the face of increasingly fierce competition from rival economies in Asia and Europe.

Thus the issue of minority inclusion is not about historically poor Americans becoming better off at the expense of the rich: it is about all Americans becoming progressively worse off than they were at the turn of the millennium.

economy can neither recover nor excel

Inadequate education is a problem in a country where wealth depends on success in the service/knowledge economy. In most of this country’s minority-dominated communities—inner cities, barrios, poor rural areas, and Indian reservations—only about half of today’s ninth graders will graduate from high school.

These jobs required a literate workforce. Today, the most profitable enterprises are in the knowledge economy, where value is created through innovation, intellectual property, analysis, or special know-how.

The most pressing problem is that today’s minorities—who are tomorrow’s employees and suppliers—are not getting the education they need to staff the workforce in the service/knowledge economy, or the help they need to fully participate in the entrepreneurial economy.

A deeper problem is the adverse economic impact of minority underachievement. The highly educated and experienced baby boomers are beginning to retire en masse. They will need to be replaced in the U.S. workforce and the entrepreneurial economy. Demographic changes destine their replacements to be primarily minorities. If we do not foster minority