New companies with high growth potential – and with high potential to create jobs – often struggle to obtain sufficient capital to cross the so-called “Valley of Death” in the process from concept to prototype. With continued economic uncertainty, government funding is no longer a guaranteed solution, and private investors have become increasingly risk averse. According to a report released by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, both startup activity and investment would be increased by a permanent tax exemption on capital gains on investments in startups held for at least five years.

Building on a long-term trend, the nation’s business startup rate fell below 8 percent for the first time in 2010, marking the lowest point on record for new firm births. New firms as a percentage of all firms continued a steady downward trend in 2010 – going from a high of 13 percent (as a percentage of all firms) in the 1980s to just under 11 percent in 2006 before making a steep decline to the 8 percent in 2010 – the most current year of data available.

A study released from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation tests claims by some economists and commentators who have argued that annual turnover on the Fortune 500 list — and its rise over time — is evidence of the strength of U.S. innovation and productivity.

Calling an increase in wait times for high-skilled foreign nationals to get green cards to stay in the United States a threat that could “deprive the country of talented individuals who will choose to develop innovations, make their careers and raise their families in other nations,” the National Foundation for American Policy released this report, which says wait times are likely to increase in employment-based immigration categories.

High school class of 2012 graduates will soon find themselves entering a higher education system facing unprecedented challenges — and skyrocketing college costs are only part of the problem. In this report, a panel of education leaders and policy experts identify critical challenges facing U.S. higher education and offer ambitious solutions to reform — and reinvent — the system itself.

While Initial Public Offerings like Facebook’s make front page news, life after an IPO and its impact on the broader economy have not been looked at in-depth. A Kauffman Foundation report examines the little-studied employment and revenue growth performance of all domestic operating companies that have made IPOs over the past 15 years and offers insights for policymakers.

Underemployed post-graduate researchers represent a vast, untapped resource that could be harnessed to address America’s thorniest scientific challenges, according to this report. The paper suggests that “fractional scholarship” could employ surplus scholarly expertise to advance scientific research, much as distributed computing projects – which recognize that most computers are largely idle during their lifetimes – utilize spare computational cycles to seek answers to complicated problems.

A compelling report out from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation describes how most institutional investors, including larger state pension funds, endowments and foundations, may be shortchanged by their investments in venture capital funds.

Cost trends in U.S. health care consistently increase at about 2.5 percentage points faster than the general rate of inflation – clearly an unsustainable rate. To address what it called “America’s most urgent public policy problem,” the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation released a report that focuses on improving the cost-benefit balance in American health care through open access to medical data.

In the midst of intense global competition for innovation supremacy among countries, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation released one of the most comprehensive assessments ever undertaken of countries’ innovation policies.