Abstract
Financial investors traditionally prize entrepreneurial ideas that have the potential to capture a large customer base and generate significant revenue quickly. However, entrepreneurial ideas that have the potential to be world-changing but without substantial and quick revenue potential have difficulty raising the capital they need to launch. This leaves solutions to global problems like climate change, misinformation, poverty, and hunger underfunded compared to technology companies that cater to wealthy audiences.
Borrowing from the templates created by the United States through its Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs, as well as global programs run through organizations like the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), this article advocates for a novel international grant funding program for new entrepreneurial ventures that seek to provide solutions to significant global challenges. Using the United Nations (U.N.) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a guide, this article is the first to propose a framework for funding new entrepreneurial ventures that do not meet the traditional criteria of financial investors but seek to solve important future-facing global problems. While past scholarship has addressed the strengths and weaknesses of investment and grant funding options for new ventures, this article significantly contributes to the literature by combining many of these scholarly ideas into a comprehensive program that would provide necessary capital to world-changing entrepreneurs who would otherwise not receive funding.
Recommended Citation
David Nows,
Funding Futurist Ideas,
102 Neb. L. Rev. 849
(2023)
Available at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/nlr/vol102/iss4/5