December 7, 2002 - Entrepreneurship will save the economy. That's what Panos Mourdoukoutas contends in his new book, Nurturing Entrepreneurship. The professor of economics at the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University in Brookville, N.Y. argues that "collective entrepreneurship" in particular is responsible for economic prosperity in the United States. And it will be responsible for the nation's economic recovery.

"The U.S. prosperity can be attributed to the development of a new business institution, collective entrepreneurship," says Mourdoukoutas. "[It's a] fluid organizational structure that allows the hidden entrepreneurs scattered among suppliers, distributors, customers and collaborators to participate in the discovery and exploitation of new business opportunities."

Mourdoukoutas wrote his most recent book with Stratos Papadimitriou, managing director of Athens Urban Transport Organization and assistant professor in the department of Marine Studies at the University of Piraes in Greece. Together they lay out an entrepreneurial blueprint for start-ups, established corporations and government agencies.

Their notion of entrepreneurship is basic, yet sweeping. It should bring out the imagination, ingenuity and creativity of individual workers and groups of workers. It cannot be easily transferred across corporate boundaries, a characteristic which makes it a valuable competitive tool. Vehicles of entrepreneurship include venture capitalism, business incubators, the Internet, job rotation and labor transfers, working teams, cash-based bonuses, employee stock ownership plans and stock options, corporate spin-offs, strategic alliances and more.

Governments, argue Mourdoukoutas and Papadimitriou, can encourage entrepreneurship by lifting trade protectionism, deregulating domestic markets, providing protections for intellectual property, and bridging the debt and equity financing gap. In short, governments can implement policies that support the transformation from a managed to an entrepreneurial economy.

Nurturing Entrepreneurship is different than most books of its kind. Instead of focusing on groups that assist small, entrepreneurial corporations, this book focuses on institutions that nurture entrepreneurship in small and large corporations. And it discusses the government policies needed to accommodate and support a truly entrepreneurial economy.

"As was the case with previous economic contractions in the U.S., entrepreneurship is the way out of the current economic stagnation," says Mourdoukoutas. "Entrepreneurs have always come up with new products and processes, new business models, and new ways of distributing commodities, energizing the economy, creating new industries, and new sources of income and employment."

For additional information, call the C.W. Post Office of Public Relations at (516) 299-2332.