back to government

With all the talk about how US's economic and technology success draws on the private sector initiative and how government is really playing but a minor role, it is fascinating to discover bit-by-bit, in the midst of all other talk, how at the end of the day, government still appears to have played major role at critical turning points.

The most recent discovery of mine was from Josh Lerner and some other Harvard Busines School folks that mention in their book "Venture Capital and Private Equity" that, indeed, during the early evolution years of venture capital industry federally guaranteed risk capital pools called Small Business Investment Companies (SBICs) constituted a significant sources of venture money.

I am not taking this as a sign to claim that the US private sector initiative and energy is any less important than we thought. I am just noting an interesting tendency here to somehow downplay the role of government, and avoid admitting that many good things come out of reasonably balanced collaboration between private and public sectors.

And I do still think that in both mature environments and in places where the venture capital industry is still evolving, private sector initiative is critical. By the same token, however, a little friendly push from the government would seem to help a lot - Israel and Finland being the prime evidence along with the US. Those same examples also indicate, though, that this help can come in various forms as long as it is free of political manipulation.