NEW YORK (Reuters) - Britain would have 1.8 million more businesses if its enterprise model were like that of the United States, where people are twice as likely to start their own companies, Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown has said.
Brown and U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow sat down with entrepreneurs to tease out the secrets of their success with the hope of creating government policies to help spread the wealth.
"We still know that Britain can learn from America’s model of enterprise. Compared with Britain, Americans are almost twice as likely to be involved in starting up a new business, and Britain would have 1.8 million more businessmen and women if we had the same proportion of people starting a business as the United States," Brown said in his opening remarks to the US-UK Enterprise Forum in New York on Monday.
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Snow highlighted the intangible nature of entrepreneurial success, while Brown said the governments are ready to listen for ways to make more accommodative policies for new businesses.
"In spite of its importance and our respect for it, we have no formal theory of entrepreneurship. Economists, who love to produce deterministic models, have been unable to model entrepreneurship," Snow said.
"The basic question we face is how to increase the number of entrepreneurs," he added.
In the United States, small businesses account for about 50 percent of employment, and create more than half of the net new jobs, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration.
The 17 entrepreneurs, who included not just small business owners, but also well-known businessmen such as Richard Branson, chairman of the Virgin Group of Companies and Jeffrey Bleustein, chairman and chief executive officer of Harley-Davidson.
"We are hear to listen ... to see how we can shape the next stage of policy," Brown said.
Snow said the best thing for government to do was to help nurture small businesses and then "get out of the way."
"Entrepreneurship and heavy regulation is an oxymoron," Snow said.
The entrepreneurs highlighted some of the reasons for striking out on their own, chief among them was that they were unhappy working for anyone else and had the courage to put aside their fears of failure to start a business.
"I don’t like people telling me what to do," said Renee Amoore, founder of the Amoore Group, Inc., an economic development, health care and management consulting firm.
One difference between the business culture of the two countries was highlighted by a British entrepreneur, Richard Reed, co-founder of drinks company innocent.
"We don’t celebrate business success the same way you guys do," Reed said of the American’s gathered at the table.
