America’s entrepreneurial economy is the envy of the world.  Young companies account for almost 30 percent of new jobs, and as we’ve fought back from the worst economic crisis of our lifetimes, startups have helped our private sector create 15.5 million jobs since early 2010—the longest streak of private-sector job creation on record.  

Today, in celebration of National Entrepreneurship Month, the Administration is releasing a Top 10 list of President Obama’s most significant specific actions to promote American entrepreneurship, as well as announcing new efforts to build on these successes. 

Over the past eight years, thanks to the grit, determination, and creativity of entrepreneurs all across the country, American startup activity is rebounding and growing more inclusive.

Here is a short summary of the President’s top 10 actions to accelerate American entrepreneurship; for more details, see here.

1. Signed permanent tax incentives for startup investment, by making the research and experimentation (R&E) tax credit available to pre-revenue startups and permanently eliminating capital gains tax on certain small business investments.
2. Accelerated the transition of research discoveries from lab to market, by scaling up the I-Corps entrepreneurship training program for Federally-funded scientists and engineers, opening up data on Federal research facilities and intellectual property, extending and strengthening the $2.5 billion Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, and more.
3. Cut red tape for entrepreneurs, with over 100 cities and communities taking the Startup in a Day pledge to streamline their business startup processes, allowing entrepreneurs to navigate requirements in as little as 24 hours.
4. Expanded regional entrepreneurship opportunities, startup accelerator programs investing in regional innovation clusters, and incentivizing regional innovation strategies research commercialization centers and early-stage seed capital funds.  
5. Directly boosted entrepreneurs’ access to capital, with $8.4 billion in loans and venture investments catalyzed by the State Small Business Credit Initiative (SSBCI) and new pathways for impact investment funds and early-stage innovation funds through the Small Business Investment Company (SBIC) program.  
6. Prioritized inclusive entrepreneurship, with the first-ever White House Demo Day catalyzing major investors, technology companies, and other organizations to committing to new actions to ensure diverse recruitment and hiring, complemented by Federal agency actions to reduce barriers faced by women entrepreneurs, train veteran entrepreneurs for 21st century opportunities, and more.
7. Created opportunities for promising entrepreneurs and innovators from abroad, allowing international students with qualifying science and engineering degrees from U.S. universities to extend the time they participate in practical training, and unlocking the talents of high-skilled Americans-in-waiting.
8. Updated securities laws for high-growth companies, with the bipartisan Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act making it easier for smaller firms to responsibly make an initial public offering (IPO), allowing entrepreneurs to raise up to $50 million through regulated “mini public offerings,” and creating a national marketplace for securities-based crowdfunding.
9. Made the U.S. patent system more efficient and responsive to innovators, by signing the bipartisan America Invents Act to significantly reduce patent application costs and wait times for startups and small businesses, taking steps to increase transparency and level the playing field for innovators, and more.
10. Unleashed entrepreneurship in the industries of the future, including clean energy, biotechnology, the commercial space industry, nanotechnology, drones, robotics, advanced manufacturing, and more.

To ensure that every American entrepreneur has a straight shot at success, we need all hands on deck.  That’s why, since the launch of the White House Startup America initiative in 2011, the President has issued a consistent public call to action to companies, nonprofits, universities, investors, and others to celebrate and accelerate high-growth entrepreneurship throughout the country.

Today, even more organizations are responding to that call to action, with engineering deans from more than 200 universities committed to building a more diverse student talent pipeline; 79 companies committed to the Tech Inclusion Pledge, an effort to make the technology workforce at each of their companies representative of the American people as soon as possible; and over 30 angel investor groups with over $800 million under management making a new commitment to promote inclusive entrepreneurship. For more details, click here.

Many of President Obama’s signature achievements have significantly increased opportunities for entrepreneurs to take smart risks and build the next generation of great American companies:  the Affordable Care Act is making it easier for entrepreneurs to buy health insurance, unlocking them from traditional employer-based coverage; the Pay As You Earn program is making it easier for entrepreneurs to pay off student loan debt; the Open Data Initiative has unlocked over 200,000 government datasets as raw material for entrepreneurial innovation; ConnectED and ConnectALL are allowing aspiring entrepreneurs everywhere to access high-speed broadband, while a strong net neutrality policy ensures a free and open internet; and the President signed into law the largest annual increase in research and development funding in America’s history.

These and other efforts to address income inequality, promote competitive markets, reduce unduly restrictive occupational licensing, and scale up rapid training for 21st century technology skills are essential to ensure that America remains the best place on the planet to start and scale the next great company.

On January 20, 2009, President Obama issued a simple and powerful pledge: to restore science to its rightful place. Coming into office, the President was committed to reinvigorating the American scientific enterprise through a strong commitment to basic and applied research, innovation, and education; to restoring integrity to science policy; and most importantly, to making decisions on the basis of evidence, rather than ideology.

Today, the Administration is releasing a list of 100 examples of the profound impact that the President’s leadership has had in building U.S. capacity in science, technology, and innovation and bringing that capacity to bear on national goals. The release of this list also marks the milestone of Dr. John P. Holdren becoming, on June 18, 2016, the longest-serving President’s Science Advisor since Vannevar Bush pioneered a similar role while serving Presidents Roosevelt and Truman during and after World War II.

Be sure to check out the full list, but here is just a sampling:

• Increased science, technology, and innovation talent in the Administration. The President created three new high-level science, technology, and innovation positions in the White House—a U.S. Chief Technology Officer, a U.S. Chief Information Officer, and a Chief Data Scientist. Through the U.S. Digital Service, GSA’s 18F, and the Presidential Innovation Fellows program—each created by this Administration—more than 450 engineers, designers, data scientists, and product managers have signed on for a tour of duty to serve in over 25 agencies alongside dedicated civil servants to improve how government delivers modern digital services to the American people. He also reinvigorated the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST).
  
   
• Restored scientific integrity, opened up data, and enhanced collaboration with citizens. On the first day of his Administration, the President issued a Presidential Memorandum calling on all the agencies in the Federal Government to work together to create “an unprecedented level of openness” in government and to “establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration,” and soon thereafter issued a Presidential Memorandum on scientific integrity to ensure the public is able to “trust the science and scientific process informing public-policy decisions.” To date, more than 180,000 Federal datasets and collections have been made available to the public on Data.gov, and more than 4 million full-text scientific journal articles and growing volumes of scientific research data are now free and accessible to the public via agency-designated repositories. Since 2010, more than 80 Federal agencies have engaged 250,000 Americans through more than 700 challenges on Challenge.gov to address tough problems. 
   
• Enacted a historic increase in research and development, and maintained it as a priority despite tight fiscal constraints. With $18.3 billion in research and development funding, the Recovery Act of February 2009 was part of the largest annual increase in research and development funding in America’s history, and every President’s budget proposed by President Obama since then has consistently prioritized research funding.
   
• Prioritized and encouraged broad participation in STEM education. The President’s Educate to Innovate campaign, launched in November 2009, has resulted in more than $1 billion in private investment to improve K-12 STEM education. The Nation is on track to meet the President’s January 2011 State of the Union goal to put 100,000 additional excellent STEM teachers in America’s classrooms by 2021. The President has helped showcase to students—including through events such as the White House Science Fair—that science, math, engineering, and computer programming are deeply compelling subjects that can help solve problems locally and globally.
   
• Launched a national network for manufacturing innovation. The Administration has launched a national network of nine Manufacturing Innovation Institutes, supported by over $600 million in Federal investment and matched by more than $1.2 billion in non-Federal investment, and is on a course to launch 15 institutes by January 2017.
  
   
• Expanded entrepreneurship across the nation. From 2014 to now, the Small Business Administration has funded over 100 startup accelerator programs in every corner of the country, serving well over 3,000 startups that have collectively raised over $850 million in capital. As part of the first-ever White House Demo Day in August 2015, 40 leading venture-capital firms, with more than $100 billion under management, committed to advance opportunities for women and underrepresented minorities, and more than a dozen major technology companies committed to new actions to ensure diverse recruitment and hiring.
   
• Driven innovation in health care. In January 2015, President Obama launched the Precision Medicine Initiative, providing more than $200 million to accelerate a new era of medicine that delivers the right treatment at the right time to the right person, taking into account individuals’ health histories, genes, microbiomes, environments, and lifestyles. In January 2016, the President tasked Vice President Biden with heading a new national effort to end cancer—by encouraging public and private efforts to double the rate of progress in cancer prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and care in order to make a decade’s worth of advances in 5 years. In addition, President Obama launched the BRAIN Initiative in April 2013 to develop neuro-technologies that could expand our understanding of how the brain works and uncover new ways to treat, prevent, and cure brain disorders. This effort has already catalyzed $1.5 billion in public and private funds. Further, the President signed an executive order in September 2014 directing key Federal departments and agencies to take action to combat the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
  
   
• As part of a historic push to take action on climate change, contributed to the rapidly declining cost of renewable-energy technologies and issued new greenhouse gas and fuel-economy standards. The United States now generates more than three times as much electricity from wind and 30 times as much from solar as it did in 2008; and the cost for wind electricity in good-to-excellent sites has fallen roughly 40 percent, and the cost for solar electricity has fallen by 50-60 percent. The Administration also released greenhouse gas and fuel-economy standards for light duty and heavy duty vehicles. The fuel-economy standards for passenger vehicles are the toughest in U.S. history and, once fully implemented, will save drivers as much as $8,000 in fuel costs over the life of their new vehicle while avoiding 6 billion tons of greenhouse gas pollution and reducing American dependence on foreign oil by 2 million barrels per day in 2025.
  
   
• Expanded national, local, and mobile broadband access. Under the Recovery Act, the Administration added or improved more than 114,000 miles of broadband infrastructure, making high-speed connections available to more than 25,000 community institutions. Through aggressive spectrum policy and private investment, more than 98 percent of Americans have access to fast 4G/LTE mobile broadband.
  
   
• Fostered a burgeoning private space sector and increased capabilities for our journey to Mars. Working with NASA, American companies have developed new spacecraft that are delivering cargo to the International Space Station (ISS) and will start ferrying astronauts there by the end of 2017. The Administration’s investments in space technology development, including through the Space Technology Mission Directorate created by NASA in 2013, are developing less-expensive capabilities for NASA’s exploration missions and for the President’s goal of a human mission to Mars in the 2030s. Due to the Administration’s leadership, ISS’s lifetime has been extended twice, and the Station is now due to continue operating until at least 2024.
  

See all 100

But today, we’re taking one step forward to change that. In honor of National Donate Life Month, the President issued a Proclamation that solidifies his Administration’s commitment to shortening the organ waiting list, emphasizing that “across government, industry, academia, private organizations, and the medical and philanthropic communities, we must all do our part to lift up donors, donor families, and patients by supporting efforts to shorten the organ waiting list.”

Today’s Proclamation builds on the action this Administration has taken to improve outcomes for individuals waiting for organ transplants and support living donors.

Each year, approximately 6,000 Americans make the selfless decision to become a living organ donor, facilitating life-saving kidney and liver transplants. Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, individuals who have donated organs have access to health insurance without worrying whether their donation will be considered a pre-existing condition.

The HOPE Act signed by President Obama in 2013 laid the groundwork for the first HIV-positive to HIV-positive transplants in the United States. This week, surgeons at Johns Hopkins announced that they had performed the first-in-the-world HIV-positive to HIV-positive liver transplant and the first-in-the-U.S. HIV-positive to HIV-positive kidney transplant. These medical successes will pave the way for as many as 1,000 people a year in the United States to have access to life-saving transplants that would not have been possible before.

But there is still more we can do. The vast majority of the organ waiting list is made up of people waiting for a kidney transplant. These Americans are hoping for a life-saving transplant that can add more years to their lives. In addition to the tremendous human cost, the kidney waiting list carries a huge cost to the public purse; Medicare pays more than $34 billion per year – more than the entire budget of the National Institutes of Health – to care for patients with end-stage kidney failure.

A recent transformative innovation called kidney paired donation (KPD), which pools living donors and recipients to increase the likelihood of matches, can improve this. In order to increase the number of potential transplants, the Department of Health and Human Services launched a nationwide KPD program in 2010 to build on this practice.

Drawing on the spirit of innovation that President Obama spoke about in this year’s State of the Union, seven government agencies have now invested nearly $3 billion over a 3-year period in the future of bioengineering to advance our understanding of wound repair and organ and tissue regeneration and preservation.

Part of the answer will be continuing to invest in scientific breakthroughs that redefine what is possible in bioengineering. Just a few generations ago, living without kidneys was unimaginable. But that changed thanks to Dr. Willem Kolff, a Dutch immigrant who brought his invention of the dialysis machine to the United States after World War II. As we seek to create the future we want to live in, we must harness this spirit of hard work and creativity to help shorten the organ waiting list.

Towards that end, in the coming months, senior Administration officials will host a Summit at the White House to highlight the role of innovation in organ donation and transplantation, discuss the challenges we face, and lift up commitments to meet them. As the President said in his Proclamation, “we recommit to supporting the researchers, innovators, advocates, and medical professionals working to reduce the number of people awaiting vital organ transplants.”

But there is still a simple and profound part that Americans across the country can play in this challenge to reduce the organ waiting list. More than ninety percent of Americans support organ donation, but only a fraction are registered to donate themselves. Helping ensure that more people are aware of donation opportunities is a crucial first step. To register as an organ donor or learn more, visit www.organdonor.gov.

Dr. Mary Wakefield is HHS Acting Deputy Secretary.

As you might suspect, we at the Office of Science and Technology Policy are pretty excited about Back to the Future Day. And in addition to its cinematic significance, today also marks the release of the President’s updated Strategy for American Innovation, which provides an overview of the Administration’s efforts to ensure that America continues to develop world-changing innovations for many years to come.

One reason for our excitement is that many of the innovations that we take for granted -- such as smart phones and global communications satellite -- were inspired by science fiction. A number of the technologies portrayed in Back to the Future are either here today (flat panel displays, video chats, gesture-based computing) or under development (flying cars, hoverboards). Many technologies and ideas that seem like science fiction today -- such as Harry Potter’s cloak of invisibility, an Iron Man suit, or Andy Weir’s story about astronauts on Mars -- are being actively explored by scientists and engineers.

This is a perfect day to start a conversation about an important topic – the role that science fiction plays in inspiring scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs.

As science and technology continue to advance and push the boundaries of what we can achieve, the relevant question is often no longer – “What can we do?” but “What should we do?” Creativity, imagination, and storytelling can help motivate teams to work on hard problems.

There are already some initiatives to explore the boundaries between science fiction and science fact:

Academic programs like Arizona State University’s Center for Science and the Imagination bring together writers, scientists and engineers to “reignite humanity’s grand ambitions.” Arizona’s program has also encouraged science-fiction writers to portray futures in which, as author Neal Stephenson put it, “Big Stuff Gets Done.”

The National Academy of Science’s Science and Entertainment Exchange connects top entertainment-industry professionals with leading scientists and engineers, who help increase the realism of the portrayal of science in movies and TV shows.

Professors at institutions including Rollins College and the University of Minnesota, such as James Kakalios, a professor who participated in one of OSTP’s “We The Geeks” Google+ Hangouts, are teaching college classes on the physics of superheroes.

Practitioners of “design fiction” are creating artifacts such as a fictional owner’s manual for a self-driving car to spark richer conversations about the future.

We’re interested in your ideas for using science fiction as a source of inspiration, and for stimulating additional collaborations between writers, artists, scientists and engineers.

For example, America’s creative talent could help describe a future in which, as President Obama put it, we go to space “not just to visit but to stay.” I recently interviewed a former NASA physicist with a vision for bootstrapping solar system civilization. This will ultimately require developing robotic factories capable of making the full range of materials, devices and structures needed to support human civilization – using energy and raw materials from space. Compelling stories, images and movies about this scenario could motivate the next generation of science, engineers, and entrepreneurs to make it so.

If you have an idea you’d like to share with us, please drop us a line via this web form. We’d love to hear from you!

Watch "We the Geeks" on a 21st Century Resume live on Thursday, June 20th, at 2:00 p.m. EDT at WH.gov/WeTheGeeks. Join the conversation and ask your questions with the hashtag #WeTheGeeks. Sign up to get email updates about future hangouts.

In the same way that “merit badges” have been used by the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts and medals have been used by the military to demonstrate achievement, a growing number of foundations, government agencies, companies and non-profits are exploring “digital badges” as the 21st century equivalent of a resume-builder that students and workers can use to showcase their skills, encourage their peers, and find meaningful educational and employment opportunities. 

With support from the MacArthur Foundation, the Mozilla Foundation, and others, digital badges are being used to:

• Recognize student accomplishments in technical fields such as computer science and robotics;
• Help veterans get jobs by demonstrating the valuable real-world skills they’ve acquired in the military;
• Inspire students as part of a larger effort to reduce the number of high-school dropouts, which today number more than 1 million per year.

While much work is yet to be done to build an evidence base for the value of badges in various contexts, the badges movement is growing. In March, the City of Chicago, Mozilla, MacArthur, and 143 other organizations launched the “Summer of Learning.” The effort will recognize student learning whether it occurs at a park, museum, library or online course – and give learners digital credentials that communicate the skills they have developed. And just last week, MacArthur announced a major multi-year goal: to work with partners to give two million more students and adults access to compelling digital badges that help them achieve education and employment goals.

Building on the President Obama’s call to action to look for new and creative ways to engage students in hands-on science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) activities, as well as his ConnectEd plan to deliver high-speed Internet to 99% of American students, some Federal agencies are exploring the potential of badges as well. From a major topic at the Department of Education’s Reimagining Education conference last month to the work by NASA to create space explorer badges, a number of Federal agencies are exploring digital badges in both education and employment. 

On Thursday, June 20th, at 2:00 p.m. EDT, the White House will host a “We The Geeks” Google+ Hangout on digital badges. During a conversation moderated by OSTP's Tom Kalil, we’ll be talking about the potential of digital badges to help students and adults with:

• Erin Knight, Sr. Director of Learning & Badges, Mozilla Foundation
• Connie Yowell, Director of Education for U.S. Programs, MacArthur Foundation
• Bryan Norato, student, University of Rhode Island
• Richard Culatta, Acting Director, Office of Educational Technology, Department of Education

Watch the "We the Geeks" Hangout live on WhiteHouse.gov/WeTheGeeks and on the White House Google+ page on Thursday. Got questions and comments? Use the hashtag #WeTheGeeks on Twitter and on Google+ and we'll answer some during the live Hangout.

Thomas Kalil is Deputy Director for Technology and Innovation at OSTP