David Ponraj

Digital Transformation leveled the playing field as stated in the New York Times bestseller book by Thomas Friedman, The World Is Flat. Today, innovations driven by technology have created ways for entrepreneurs to create and sell solutions that drive productivity, efficiency and innovation for all industries and human problems. Invention and ingenuity can now happen in all communities and economic conditions. We should leverage this by supporting entrepreneurs with resources they can use to build their businesses. Resources like commercialization programs, wet labs, access to patents and other tools that can help them build on existing innovation.

I vividly remember the phrase “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure” from a childhood game, Sim City. This is so true in the business world. In fact, for entrepreneurs, the idea of a circular economy creates so many opportunities to innovate and give back to sustainable growth and prosperity for all communities. We live in a global economy where consumer demand and manufacturing have created several unsustainable practices. Entrepreneurship can help by focusing on leveraging the byproducts of these adverse effects and converting them into usable and effective products that can have an additional lifecycle, creating a secondary marketplace and a circular economy.

Entrepreneurship is the best path to wealth creation for so many Americans. Especially if you are from an underrepresented community, entrepreneurship might be your only path to sustainable income for your family. Immigrants, new citizens, returning citizens and various other groups of unemployed people struggle to qualify for jobs in the local community. Sometimes it is the language barrier, it could be lack of a reliable mode of transportation, or various other reasons. Entrepreneurship on the other hand, removes these barriers and focuses instead on human ingenuity, will power and motivation, qualities that are abundant in these communities. Hence, entrepreneurship and small business startups should be inclusive.

Its a great idea to include alternative measures to look at economic equity. In fact sometime the unintended impact on social and anthropological well-being might be just as important as the impact on economic activity. When a local watering hole is removed due to a local bar or laundromat being shuttered, it adversely impacts the social well-being and community elements of the neighborhood. We should measure these data points as well.

That investing in economic equity somehow takes investments away from haves to have-nots is a false dichotomy. When you invest in the lowest common denominator, you create economic opportunity for everyone in the ecosystem. The famous "curb-cut effect" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curb_cut_effect) is a perfect example to illustrate the point.

Yes, economic equity is hard to measure and is a difficult concept. That does not mean that is it not a critical concept worth measuring. In fact, its complexity is why we need to invest in better measurement tools to capture data on economic activity. There are standard measures for GDP and other ways to measure economic output. Similarly, we need to create standards on what economic equity measures are so we can remove subjectivity from the conversation.