cc >> Jeanan Yasiri: This is
Entrepreneurship in Society.
the University of Wisconsin It'School of Human Ecology.gh
I'm Jeanan Yasiri. As we
extend thanks to our partners in begin today, I'd like to
Office of Corporate Relations, supporting this course: the UW
for their technical support, and the UW College of Engineering
Marion Kauffman Foundation which financial support from the Ewing
academic education is committed to advancing
Additionally, we'd like to thank in entrepreneurship.
Public Television and their University Place crew for taping
today's lecture. I'm quite
Katherine Sydor today, a pleased to introduce
Affairs at the LaFollette School master's candidate of Public
the University of Wisconsin. of Public Affairs here at
here in Wisconsin, attending Katherine was born and raised
heading to Minnesota for her high school in Hartford before
and women's studies. In 2006, undshe packed up and movedory
across the country to Washington, DC, to learn more
about the nation's federal
possibilities to advance the government, inspired by the
national scale. For cautwo and a half years,on a
Katherine served in the office
David Obey, who represented the onorthwestern corner of our
state. And after
office of freshman senator Jeff Merkley from Oregon, assisting
in constituent relations
This fall we are fortunate that Katherine returned to her roots
here in Wisconsin and is now
public affairs at the University pursuing her masters degree in
concentration of her work is on osocial and economic justice.e
She also serves as the project
Nonprofits. Please assistant with the UW Center for
Katherine as she talks with us about entrepreneurship and
public policy. [APPLAUSE]
Katherine Sydor:
So today we're going to talk Thank you, Jeanan.
which you will see, through the acourse of the lecture, is very,
closely related to social entrepreneurialism, which Jeanan
already talked about
Public entrepreneurialism, earlier in the semester.
translation and implementation though, is the generation,
sector. So in order of neto understand thepublic
concept of entrepreneurialism and how it interacts in the
world of public policy, we have to understand what is public
policy. So we need a
We touched on this a few weeks definition there.
Wisconsin Idea. What ago when we talked about the
come to mind is government. Government.s
So the practice of governance.
create public policy by passing laws and regulations, but public
policy is more than just our
It's the people behind the elected representatives.
street level bureaucrats counter at the DMV, and it's the
day-to-day basis. And thit's also the tax breaksa
that we give to small businesses
development. In the tononprofit community, someand
of you are more familiar
nonprofit organizations many with that than others maybe,
vulnerable populations that are either in conjunction with or in
partnership with the government or they might be in place of
what some people might think
providing. So that's that the government should be
keep in mind. Think about ansome of the peopleo
that we've already heard
Think about some of the people from this semester.
links and how they relate to that you've watched on your web
in the public sector through this idea of entrepreneurialism
So then the third idea is the idea of contracting, and this is
sort of where these nonprofits
partnerships. And the relatecontracting out ofhrough
certain government services adds
this idea, the relationship anotbetween people, theirty to
government, and public policy.
government begins to contract Iout these essential services.en
Do we want people providing social services that are
concerned about a bottom
Or do we want people or bureaucrats with sort of a
public service motivation handing out whether it may be
food stamps or your driver's
NGOs are another way to describe license or what have you.
term NGO is used in conjunction nonprofwith internationallly the
organizations. So I just
definition, but obviously wathere are many.one
This one is from Dean Kilpatrick
Violence Against Women who worked at the National
In any society governmental Pentities enact laws, make.
policies and allocate resources.
really key point to The allkeep in mind here.es is a
This is true at all levels. Public policy can generally be
defined as a system of laws,
actions, and funding priorities reguconcerning a given topic of
promulgated by a governmental entity or its representatives.
So let's just think about that, read it over a second time
because I know this is possibly a new concept to many of you.
Specifically remember that the
big, big part of the allocation of resources is a
How much funding is going pto go towards roads?
How many funding is going to go towards education or building
schools? These are increasingly
complicated questions in an age of lower tax revenue, and we've
got these large budget deficits at all levels of government.
You've been hearing a lot about that on the news right now.
We hear a lot about the national
So what is important to you din the public policy arena?.
Try to think to yourselves right now.
Is it education? Is it
Is it renewable energy? Is environmental issues?
government regulation? It could be a whole host of
things. Now, think
that you just thought of in your about whatever it is
to you and try to think about heahow you need to make ittant
important to everybody
So you've got your values, else as well.
think is the most important thing in the budget, how do you
make everyone agree with you, and that's the problem with
public policy is trying to get
idea so that it actually can everybody on board with your
the state or federal level. cIt's an extremely complicatedat
process making policy. So taking a good idea about an
important issue and turning it
policy that fulfills into a law much less a law or
A lot of times laws are written and a couple years down the
road, everybody kind of steps back and was like, whoa, that
didn't do at all what we
So the implementation process tof public policy is really
important as well. This is
see, this sort of long, arduous process of making policies, this
is where we might start to see some areas where
entrepreneurialism could
And that's where I want you guys come into the conversation.
concepts that we've been talking to start thinking about all the
now that we know what public about in this class thus far,
can sort of marriage the two. pSo a policy entrepreneur mighte
come into the state arena,
government, local government or the federal government, and they
have to have a great idea, first
new and novel way of of all, but they have to have a
And then that might eventually presenting it to everybody.
So are there any questions about end up in a functioning policy.
what public move on?s before we
So I want to get us thinking a
sort of affects your every day little bit more about how this
brainstorm here. Try to livethink about what you'ves to
done today since
How is the government or a you've gotten up.
law of public policy, how has that affected your life today?
So everybody take out a sheet of
four or five ideas. If there paper and just try to brainstorm
what I'm asking, are any questions about
I'm going to call on people in please let me know.
juhave some answers prepared.to
Okay, has everybody had a moment to think?
Does anybody want to volunteer
You can just shout it out, to be the first one?
and Irecording. Sure.r the
Yeah. >> Me?
Yeah, sure. >> I had to call the Dane County
Courthouse today. >> You
County courthouse. >> Yeah, to talk to someone
about a ticket. >> Talk to someone about a
ticket, great. That's not always a fun
phone call to make, right? How
maybe a little less directly else have people interacted
with tSure. [INAUDIBLE]today?
Yep, so she said that she walked here today using the
sidewalks, the traffic
Did anybody take the signals, the roads.
Okay, there's public policy. The bus to school today?
up with a transit plan. We City of Madison had to come
system, I think, in Madison here, even though today they may
have been running a little bit
What else in regard to the snow is related to public policy?
Which is really important to all
Who knows what I'm the voters in Madison, right?
What? [INAUDIBLE]
Snow plows, right? This is always a huge election
issue to us Wisconsinites.
What are we doing right now? Anybody have anything else?
Where does a big chunk of the funding for this university come
from? State, right?
State government. If
Knetter's, the web link for today, he talked a lot about
where the funding comes from
today. So this for being here with all of you
different things came together, all related to public policy.
So just wanted to get you thinking about that, and maybe
you can sort of connect what I'm
So now that you've got your idea in your mind of how public
policy influenced your life today, I want you to try to
consider how that decision, how the buses, how the sidewalks,
how the university, how all of
What had to happen to make the those things came into being.
bus stop today? For bus example, the sidewalks, the
somebody needed to decide that
your neighborhood. And most thereof Madison I think hass in
probably got those, but it
There was a point in time when wasn't always like that.
through the wishes of their constituents, decided that they
needed to implement something where people could have
sidewalks on the side of the
safely from here to there stwithout being in the roadalk
getting hit by a car. So
right? So there are it's aa lot of peopleissue,
that always need to come
There's the city council people, together to make things happen.
representatives, there are your federal representatives, and
sometimes those jurisdictions overlap and all of these people
have to work together.
just a federal issue, and they Sometimes it's just a local or
policy arenas to make sort osomething happen.ir own
So it's really difficult to actually make a change in the
public policy sphere. And there are some reasons for
that. The framing of
one of those reasons, makes it our Constitution,
law, or to pass a new law, not really hard to implement a new
There are a lot of different necessarily implement it.
To get a law changed, you've got channels one needs to go to.
side, you've got to build the coalition, and then you have to
think about if you're on the
want to do something as big as federal level and you actually
takes two-thirds of each house amending the US Constitution, it
amend the US Constitution. of Congress to pass a law to
difficult thing to get, and, And that's an incredibly
a reason. So it's a like I svery tall order.ult for
And sometimes these restrictions
the public policy arena, they totake something a little bitin
extra special. They take somebody with that
entrepreneurial spirit which
semester long. So one of we've been talking about all
I wanted to talk about with you guys really quickly is, who's
taken micro econ in this class? So about half of you are going
to immediately recognize
I didn't take econ when I was an what I'm talking about.
haven't take be it I would undergrad, and any of you who
taking it because I've finally strongly, strongly suggest
and I think it's changed the way taken it as an graduate student
the better. So public I loogoods, in economicss for
public good is used to describe something that is non-rivalrous
and non-excludable. What
It's sort of a weird way does that mean, right?
So something that's a public of saying something.
one person, and no one can good cannot be consumed by any
So that's not so hard beto understand, right?it.
It's like these big things
So what does the Department of that everyone has access to.
water, what do they Defenshave in common? clean
Well they're both public
We all benefit from the gooDepartment of Defense.it.
We can have reasonable
that means, but on a very basic level the Department of Defensey
is our national defense system. Whether we like it or not, we
all benefit from it. And
Department of Defense does it's not like what the
It's not like if they protect me, they can't protect you..
Because it's something that happens on such a big vast
scale, they can't exclude any one person.
Same with water. If our water is polluted or used
up, it affects all of us, right?
all of it. So the No one hproblem from antrol over
economist's point of view is
really have a market for them. that both of these goods don't
value when they So peouse these things.quately
So they might not want to pay for the Department of Defense
and they might not want to pay
might not interact with the market in an adequate way to
show what the value is
So that's a really basic of having clean water.
I'm sorry if that was like definition of a public good.
And like I said, if that seems overly basic for some of you.
take an econ class. At interesting to you, you should
that these types of goods are really only noticeable to us
when they aren't available
And so when these things aren't provided but we all need and
benefit from them it's
And this is where government called a market failure.
providing us with adequate can come in and play a role in
clean air. You hear a deflot about this in theand
news. What this actually means by
different laws and regulations
pollutants in our water or the restricting the use of
the billions for our national apdefense system every year.n
When I was doing research for this lecture I came across this
graphic online that outlines
And I just want to caution you the public policy process.
overly simplistic but this is what happens in an ideal world,t
and as you all know we don't
is the general idea of how live in an ideal world, but this
policy arena. So try to somthink about the issue the
that you thought about a few
public policy influenced your life today, and think about howw
it went through this process to become the sidewalk that you
were walking on or the bus that you were riding on or whatever
it is.
I think we've got the sufficient
understand the meat of what we're going to talk about today
which is entrepreneurialism in the public policy process.
So now let's talk about the three different ways that I
think we can look at
policy. So let's entrepreneurialism in public
back. There are three trmajor conceptsep
here that I'd like us to sort of
bit further. Number break one, government canlittle
function in a way that some might call entrepreneurial.
It might take risks sometimes.
entrepreneurial venture. And we might classify that as an
efficiency in government when considering this perspective,
this first one. Number
encourage entrepreneurialism two, government can
Clause, regulations. For through public policy.
subsidies for all sorts of example, lower taxes and
encouraging small businesses or building a major sports stadium
to encourage businesses to come to a city.
That's sort of an example of
And number three, within what I'm talking about here.
who act in ways in which government there might be people
entrepreneurial. So these can be bureaucrats or
elected officials or they might be movement leaders outside
government pushing for
Think Martin Luther King, Jr. So let's start with the first
one. Entrepreneurialism in
government. Public
particularly concerned with increasing government's capacity
to respond to issues
The innovative approaches taken by certain municipalities to
addressing major issues such as affordable housing, recreation,
open space, land use
They all show an entrepreneurial planning, and poverty.
So public entrepreneurs can bring more efficient ways of
doing things, creativity. They
to the table that somebody else who had been working there for a
long time hadn't really thought of or they might act on new
information. They might actually put in
place, they might implement a new idea.
They might organize resources in a new and sort of crazy
innovative way to try to
Another way that this can happen get a better outcome.
decision making process. is if they spread out the
way of looking at things. ThAnd they make the centralal
decision making, kind of
So there's not just one person ease it a little bit.
pyramid. So the up on important thing ton the
recognize here is that the
very different, it's analogous bottom line for government is
different in some to buimportant ways. very
It's not the same. Poverty
trash collection, they can't be evaluated in the same way that
private businesses are when they're trying to make a profit.
So after the midterm elections
think everyone on campus has last November and obviously I
the street with Governor heard about the controversy up
his budget proposal for the next biennium, this is a really
important topic to about in light of these things because
the people who came into power
campaigned on this idea of less government, less red tape, less
regulation. And so you
the tea party, they're having a really big impact in Washington,
DC, right now. The budget for this fiscal year,
fiscal year '11, still
And one of the reasons is because the tea party members of
the republican caucus are really
and they want to cut a lot of money out of the budget for this
year. And they're refusing to vote on
anything that doesn't cut anything, I think it's like $60
billion from the current budget.
issue that's affecting all of our lives right now, both state
level and federal. So it's important that we
recognize what's really at play here and what exactly they're
talking about when they talk about less government.
So a lot of people argue that government needs to be run more
like a business and that there's
bureaucracy. And this toois one idea, the sortuch
of solution to this criticism is where entrepreneurialism can
come into play. So
let's talk about the differences before we get into that,
We touched on this a slide ago, but let's get into a little bit.
more detail of what I mean here.
Does anybody have any ideas of How is government different?
the way a business works? I'll how government is different from
just gthink. Mm-hmm?nd to
It should be, well, since you said government is for people
who, public goods are for people
businesses don't create who products for everyone.ne,
[INAUDIBLE] >> Right, yeah, exactly.
So she's saying that the
everyone. In many govercases that's true.s for
Businesses create goods that are
pay for it, right? Sometimes for one person who's going to
services, but really in the end the taxpayers are paying for
most of it. Does
ideas of how government amight be different.er
Seamus? >> Businesses are looking out
for the people who
[INAUDIBLE] The business has its best
interest of what they're
The governments are trying trying to pursue.
So it's more of what the better interest of the people using the
things instead of the people
Yeah, that's a who own the business.
So he's saying that one of the great distinction.
and businesses is that differences between government
consumer, right, the customer. government is more about the
they want to make sure that they've got everything they need
to be happy. And in business there may be
this idea that you need to take care of your customer, and I
think a lot of the people have come into this class
specifically and talked about how important that is, but at
the same time their bottom
It's usually about line is to their shareholders.
So there's a very important distinction there.
And I don't mean to put this in sort of black and white, that
there's some sort of value
things because there's not. And it's important that we kind
of maintain a clear head about that.
There's not a value judgment on this.
But it is important to recognize
so that you can recognize the incentives that each one has to
provide a particular good. Okay?
So here's an example. When
wants to invest in an auto GM, General Motors Company,
shares, they can get some money, plant, they can sell some
their investment. When the and then they can go and make
wants to make a new investment, they want to buy a new F-16
bomber or some big billion
machinery, what do dollar piece of military
Can they just go buy it? No.
They have to go to Congress.
Appropriations Committee. They have to ask them for thee
money. The money
about in the committee, it gets to be debated about on the
national level whether we should
for this. It goes be spthrough all kinds ofuntry
different iterations, all kinds of people with all different
interests get involved
And then maybe they'll get their in the debate.
in a certain place and they can mononly buy 10 and maybe they it
wanted 20. There's a
how a government functions, how our government functions even on
these sort of like localized
business can function. And departmental levels and how a
who make decisions about these the Congress men and women
representatives, and they don't necessarily make decisions that
are best for the
This is sort of one of the big country overall.
democracy. We have problems in representative
representatives, but they're all these elected
constituents' concerns from this voted their specific
They're not talking about the litbig picture of the entirein.
country, nor are they talking about the big picture of the
entire country 50 years down the road.
So a lot of times we're hearing about the deficit and oh, my
gosh it's so bad, it's so bad,
representatives doing it's soanything about it?'t our
The incentives for them to do anything about the deficit
aren't really there for them on a local level.
It might be better for us because we're going to be around
in 50 years, it might be better for us if they took care of the
deficit problem now, but we've
because they're not gotvoting for our concerns.te
They're voting for the immediate
out to the elections in their cdistrict, the last election.t
And that always doesn't get the right things for us in the long
term. Another thing that you should
also remember is that businesses, a lot of them fail.
It's the hard truth. Some of them don't work out.
Is government allowed to fail? No.
Right? We have to get out there and
plow the streets. We have to pick up your garbage.
The sidewalks have to be there at this point.
Department of Defense,
If they fail, then, I mean, it's catastrophic.
If a business fails, well a business fails, someone files
bankruptcy and people go on with their lives.
But the consequences of failing a government are much greater.
So that's the point I want
This is the basic difference. There's performance and then
there's accountability. There's two different
perspectives here. I would
balance these two things. So argue that we need to
to cut red tape or cut down on when people say that we need
opinion is yes, we need to do it, but we need to do it in a
way that still leaves our bureaucrats accountable to the
people who are paying their salaries, the taxpayer.
So more entrepreneurial government might perform better
and be more efficient,
We might lose transparency and but at what costs?
that people demand we might lose the due process
If something fails under an innovative initiative, there's
much less accountability with the model, and that doesn't
always make people happier. The potential problems here are
it might be a little bit
little bit dangerous to rely on entrepreneurialism to fix all of
our government's problems.
couple of those reasons And in the last slide.ht a
Government might start being
entrepreneurialism sake instead of using it as a tool to make
sure citizen needs and public policy objectives are met.
So we need to make sure that it isn't just used just to be more
innovative. It's got
time and appropriate to be at appropriate
responsibilities of government should be met with
entrepreneurial tactics for a lot of different reasons.
So like I said, innovations often fail, and in this case if
it fails in the government, it's
So that's something at thto keep in mind, too.ayer.
So here's a really interesting
entrepreneurial government. In the late 1990s, Russia was
considered to be a very, very entrepreneurial government, both
in the way that public policies came about, and also in the way
that they were trying to
and economic encourage business development
So there's a couple different measures of entrepreneurialism
here that are at work. What were the consequences of
this? Vast, vast corruption.
Okay? By our standards and still
today, like a lot of
They've made some headway to this is still leftover.
corruption in their government, sbut compared to the United
States, Russia is not on
transparency and openness. So there's a lot of people who
were bribed to get different
under the table things,business dealings.lot of
But that's one of the prices
relaxed regulations. And so tthis is why I'm saying weng
need a balance between the two. You don't want to have this
crazy, corrupt government where anybody can do whatever they
want but it's innovative and
don't want to have something entrepreneurial, and you also
tape and regulations and that's so bogged down by red
restrianything done. Okay?an get
It has to be a balance
So I'm hoping that as we're going through this, use this to
sort of flesh out the two different arguments on either
side and understand what people are talking about when they talk
about well we want less government, well we need more
accountability, either way. The Department of Homeland
Security is a relatively new
sort of a creative perspective government agency, and they have
bureaucratic red tape. And on an old problem of
stop practices that are no they're sort of trying to
encouraging or adding to longer relevant and simply
And had they formed this the government's red tape.
things that they tried to do was department that was one of the
regulations of red tape that sort of getting rid of these
Sometimes laws are put in place 50-60 years ago, nobody thinks
about them anymore, they're still in place, and one of the
ways the government can be more entrepreneurial is getting rid
of those laws that are
As far as entrepreneurs within outdated, or regulations.
implement new practices an ato bring about change.mes
It's often very difficult.
the organizational culture of an Depending on a number of things,
point is that an entrepreneur agcan sort of work their wayhe
through this labyrinth of red tape and try to open things up.
So when the Department of Homeland Security was created a
few years ago many ideas related
consideration. The to efficiency were taken into
create this agency from scratch, government was able to
entrepreneurial thinking and they were able to encourage
It's much more difficult to do from the start.
exists. So like the that Department of Healthready
and Human Services, which is a
it would be much more difficult for someone to go in there and
try to encourage new ways of thinking about it.
The Department of Homeland
that right away. And Security, they were able to do
this is a success yet because they're still a relatively young
agency. Maybe in 10 years we'll be able
to measure it on a difficult way
open way of looking at things actually produced better results
for the people. So one
probably keep in mind when we're idea that you should
these leaders, is the talconcept of leadership.rs,
So part of running a government more like a business involves
having good leadership and being
incentives, right? able to reward people with
Some leaders are really great, Positive results.
great things. When we and thlook back on thesemplish
people we'd like to attribute the greatness of the
transformation to leadership and
red tape, being a really amazing innovation, cutting through the
ways. But were these person in all these different
they really wonderful, leaders, were
just there at the right inntime in the right place?hey
I'd argue that it's a little bit
much emphasis just on leadership of both and that putting too
picture. Things need doesn't really get the whole
great leader to make to be open to a
So entrepreneurialism in the private sector.
We talked about how government
let's move on to the second caway of looking at this.al,
How government can encourage
So the government can enact policies to encourage
entrepreneurialism in the private sector.
Think about some of the web links that you've been viewing
for class, some of the
Last semester Monty Schiro was presenters we've had in class.
he gave health insurance to his hemployees long before it was
even mandated to do so. That's one way that private
sector can sort of be more entrepreneurial.
He was offering this benefit
other people were not offering that most other places, most
That's one idea. We also their waiters and waitresses.
last semester who related his experience dealing with the city
council in trying to get
So that's one way that the zoning laws changed.
with the private sector to make things better for business ork
worse. I've listed
the government can encourage a couple ways that
It can give you secure entrepreneurialism.
Lower your taxes. Lower regulation, red tape, and
they can ensure competition.
competition, this relates Thito the idea of monopoly.ing
Monopolies are illegal in the United States, and there's a
reason for that. If monopolies were allowed to
just function as they would want
efficiency loss. You'd to, there would be this sort of
much for whatever good it is that you were buying.
And they probably wouldn't be providing enough of it for the
market. So the
this market failure, and they decide that, nope, there can't
be a monopoly. You've got to break up.
There's got to be competition among businesses.
Okay? Secure property rights is really
important to businesses. If you can't go to court and say
that someone stole your, I don't
is, the rule of law and justice kncomes in very important int
business dealings. And taxes.
Small business tax cuts to
So the important thing to keep spur innovation and growth.
you're giving benefits or tax breaks to one sector of thee
population, you have to take
So is it really efficient? Is it better for society overall
to give small businesses tax breaks?
What do you guys think? Do
of growth? Are they smallsort of an economica lot
engine? Do they create
and then a lot of tax revenue so a lot of growth
themselves in the end? Or thare we just subsidizing onor
the backs of other people, small
and create whatever it businesses to be able to go
It's a very important question, and I certainly don't have the
answer here. The last thing I wanted to talk
about is policy entrepreneurs,
entrepreneur. So these the concept of a policy
government and nonprofits who make it happen.
They take advantage of a policy window.
This is what John Kingdon calls a policy window: when something
happens that opens up an
public policy to get passed into opportunity for a specific
maybe many years of sort of being on the sidelines of public
debate. So these are the people
themselves within government
really, like I said, or the nonprofit sector that
They're the innovative leaders they get things done.
great, idea on how to make the who not only have a good, if not
importantly they have the woinnovative, creative,ost
risk-taking ideas on how to get that good idea actually into
place, how to put it on the national agenda.
So usually these people are outside the formal positions of
government. They can
groups, but they can also be appointed positions.
If they're entrepreneurs working
success is being able in to maintain successfulhat
relationships with the outside
constituencies. One person you might want to
think about, is Barack Obama
You could probably a policy entrepreneur?
I think some people might say that it's sort of impossible for
him to be one now because he's
lead the country overall, he the president, and he's got to
crazy, innovative ideas. But can't be out here talking about
he's in the best position in the on the other hand, maybe
crazy, innovative ideas that country to talk about these
big payback for us. Policy might have big results or really
for a number of endifferent reasons.te
There are three reasons,
They may enjoy the process. They specifically.
in there, talking politics. They might be advocating in
promotion of something that they
they really think is important. hAnd I would say Susan G Komen,
Komen for the Cure, I think her sister died of cancer, now I
would say she's probably a
a very important policy entrepreneur because it's
Or they might be advocating for something that reflects their
values. When I say
comes to mind some of the maybe more religious focused groups,
but it can be really anything.
group where you think environmental justice is sort of
a basic human right. Here are a couple historical
figures which I would call
When we talked about the policy entrepreneurs.
semester, we talked about a couple people who exemplified
that idea. I think this sort of exact same
idea carries over into
Edwin Witte, he's the father of social security.
So when we talked about this
Wisconsin when Roosevelt was idea at the University of
eventually took firsthis idea national.Witte
And this is a really good example of a policy entrepreneur
sort of working on the idea,
evidence and resources to put into place, and eventually when
he had a policy window when Roosevelt got into office he had
an opportunity to put it into place.
Robert LaFollette, again we discussed Fighting Bob, right,
as an example of someone
exemplification of whose entire career was the
And I hope now that we've talked the Wisconsin Idea.
see how he was a policy abouentrepreneur and how the can
Wisconsin Idea really fits
It takes ingenuity to make into that whole conversation.
The existing structures are extremely, extremely resistant
to change for a lot of different
good reasons. So these reasons, a lot of them really
right time at the right place, guys were there at the
benefited all of us. I wanted anto give you an exampleat
of a more recent entrepreneur.
for many years so let's talk These guys have both been dead
contemporary. Kenneth W aboKaiser was appointedore
chief executive officer of the
in 1994. So before Veterans Health Administration
that position, the VA had a really, really awful reputation.
And that reputation was so
still think the VA provides sawful service to our nation'say
veterans. In fact,
higher quality healthcare on a they're providing
a lower cost than numberthe private sector.res at
Did you guys know that? So
debate, this is a afreally profound idea.are
How did that happen? Well,
his vision for change and his blueprint for the future of the
VHA. I won't go into the exact
details. If you want
it, we can talk about toit after class.ut
The point is, is that he came in
implemented them and he actually with these great ideas and he
important change in our nation's made a lasting, profound,
veterans. So another healthcare for our nation's
policy entrepreneur, if you guys example of a recent
had assigned today through all listened to that podcast I
podcast series if you haven't started listening to it, I
recommend all of them. But
for today talked about Secretary the one that we listened to
So in his role as Secretary of Education he created this
national initiative called Race to the Top.
And I encourage you to read more
interesting to you because I about this if this is at all
where education policy is headed think that this is a lot of
budgets are so strapped people in the next few years because
innovative ways to get are thinking of new and
And one way of doing that is better education outcomes.
within the education arena. That's a really good example of
a more recent one. Ralph
quintessential policy entrepreneur, and a lot of the
literature that talks about policy entrepreneurs in the
public policy sphere, he's
So you guys have all sort of the big example.
He ran for president in 2000. He heard of him, right?
of the vote, but it was got still a lot of people.age
He's a very important national figure.
He founded Public Citizen,
watchdog group which which is a consumer protection
And he has a long, long history of advocating for consumer
issues. That group
So Ralph Nader helped create a he founded in 1971.
the creation of the National movement that eventually led to
Administration, NHTSA for short. Highway Traffic Safety
lives, prevent injuries, and NHTSA's mission is to save
So in case you don't know, we rall should though, right, this
very important government agency, NHTSA, it didn't exist
before Ralph Nader pushed for its creation, but it's
responsible for a lot of really important things that I think
affect all of us every
Things like safety statistics. time we get into a car.
Theft resistant standards. Safety standards.
Licenses. This is also the organization
that administers the VIN system.
that people use They alin crash testing.dummies
So in the 1960s, Ralph Nader
take responsibility for the aregulation of traffic safety.o
This is something that didn't happen before he came into the
arena here. He was
question, should the government take responsibility for the
regulation of highway safety? There were really powerful
interests that were incredibly
achieving his goal in creating investing in stopping him from
administration. So he thcreated a movement.ty
And it was really just
The relevant special interests a crazy uphill battle.
companies. And they had wa lot of money, andto
they had a vested interest in stopping this from happening
because it was going to cost
with a lot of the regulations that he wanted to put into place
to make our cars safer. They spent a lot of money
against Mr. Nader when he was trying to do this, and so he had
to be really clever and innovative in the way that he
presented his ideas to the nation.
He didn't have the money that the American car companies had
to lobby against him. He had to be creative.
He had to be smart. He
innovative. Classic hadentrepreneur. and
And in the end he was successful.
So he took risks, he worked hard, he created a moral crusade
out of a policy issue, and he also made a national name for
himself. And he's still quite important
today. And this is
he kind of got his start to being on the national stage.
Everyone agrees that we are safer now on the roads than we
were in the 1960s.
Mile per mile traveled, we're much, much safer.
Cars themselves are much safer, and consumers have a lot more
information about the safety of their cars.
What did he do? He created
and he built it on real evidence this policy movement,
He wrote articles, he talked to important people, and eventually
he got congressional hearings where these things were talked
about on a national stage.
innovative ways to work within He thought of creative and
policy outcome. So he's the the exact definition ofired
a policy entrepreneur. He was persistent, he had some
connections, and he used them,
the issues. So I think and he was very passionate about
wraps us up. Are there that that pretty much
about what Ralph Nader did? Does everybody understand how
that relates to what we've been talking about in this class
all semester long? The ideas
Or any ideas about of entrepreneurialism?
Are we clear on all of it? >> And you can have questions
for Katherine or you might have comments considering what we've
been talking about, what
because there is certainly a lot Katherine has shared with us
with us but there's a lot ofhappening right now, too.red
And I'm sitting back here thinking through having heard
Katherine share these points
through some very different thoughts than I thought a few
months ago when I heard this the
happening. So what first time given all that's
What are you thinking or what kind of questions might you
have? Anybody?
Give it a moment. >> You
been happening up the street in relation to this.
One of the big things in the
budget bill is this idea about budget repair bill and in the
you watched Mike Knetter's web the Badger Partnership, which if
quite a bit about. So it's link for this week, you'll know
so I understand people's all very controversial
but if you have any reticomments, please share. up,
I'll come over to you. >> We
We can't hear you otherwise. have to record it, though.
with the Badger Partnership, my biggest concern is how they're
going to increase financial aid for lower income students
because quite frankly that's the
like a giant red flag. The only thing that I see that is
the future but for right now rest of it may be good for
How do you think they're that's what really concerns me.
I don't know. And I honestly have the same,
that's one of the big things
about it as well. I don't thatknow and I don't thinkious
anybody knows. At my
talking about a lot of this stuff at the LaFollette School
of Public Affairs. And I
seen an exact proposal of how that is going to happen yet.
But I think that's a really good
way that I would relate that thing to think about, and the
about today in back to what we've been talking
have these ideas about how entrepreneurialism is that we
efficient and better and we want to make things more
we can just have more freedom to everybody will be better off if
but at what cost? So the be able to do certain things,
this specific part of the Badger cost in this case, in
create even higher barriers for low income students to be able
to get into the university. >> Question back here.
Yep. >> More of just a comment but
kind of looking back at the Madison Undergraduate Initiative
which Biddy kind of proposed as being part of the New Badger
Partnership in the beginning, that's an incredibly
entrepreneurial way to look at it because the higher
socioeconomic classes had to pay
and that built up an endowment that but the lower ones didn't,
for scholarships. So as thathat continues with theack
New Badger Partnership hopefully
bigger and better and it wibetter. >> Great.r and
I'm going to ask you, Seamus, can you describe that
initiative? [INAUDIBLE]
The Madison Undergraduate Initiative, it was what was
voted on like two or three
an increased amount on our years ago, and now we all pay
lower socioeconomic class and can't pay that increase, you are
supplemented and don't
So you get like a stipend towards it.
So if you have the money to pay for it, you do pay for it and
that goes towards an endowment
need-based scholarships. that is built to offer more
So that's a perfect example of an entrepreneurial sort of
innovative solution to a
The public policy problem being access to higher education.
Are there any more
And obviously you can come and comments or questions?
anything else you'd talk tlike to ask or say.ou have
I'm just going to throw out kind of a half comment/half
question out, and I don't know
was listening to you and that there is an answer, but I
you shared regarding President thinking about the example that
considered him quite Obama and how some have really
he was a senator and as a campaigner but wonder if peoplet
still consider him
Now, we can answer that or not so entrepreneurial.
you look at movements and but when you look at policy when
entrepreneurs, does there come a
into leadership roles where the masses would no longer consider
them to be entrepreneurial? >> Right, yeah and that is
something that I think
I think that, like I said before, people could probably
argue both ways for President Obama.
I think there's a lot of people,
people, the base of the democratic party who think that
he's not doing nearly as
There's a lot more innovative msort of far left liberal.
policies that they would like to
doing right now. But see put into place that he's not
Secretary of Education, Arne at the same time, the
about in that podcast that Duncan, with what we talked
the education initiatives, you guys listened to today,
is under the president. That initiative is part of
President Obama's platform, and that's part of his
administration. So I
probably hundreds of examples just like in the Department of
Education in the way that his administration is furthering
entrepreneurial ideas.
Anything else before we move on? >> Great, great.
thinking through this. It's I a really different kind ofr
concept. Again, as we start to delve into
different areas of
impacts different sectors, and entrepreneurship and how it
Katherine Sydor for I an excellent lecture.ank
Didn't she do a great job?
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