WHAT MAKES THE "FIRST-TO-INVENT" SYSTEM UNIQUE AND DIFFERENT FROM SYSTEMS AROUND THE WORLD?

The answer lies in the democratic origins of the United States. In an Entrepreneur Magazine article, July 1991, "The Making of the American Dream, Born in U.S.A.", Senior Editor and author Erika Kotite states,

"From the beginning, an environment for free enterprise and the self-made individual was in place. The spirit that drives today's entrepreneurs is the same spirit that spurred on early settlers like Revere...no one could hold them down here.

"As civilization moved westward, there was a tremendous need for housing, transportation, and services. Anyone with the desire could exploit the market." says, Lawrence G. Lavengood, professor of business history at Northwestern University's Kellogg Graduate School of Management in Chicago.

"Such an expanding market paved the way for a number of prolific American inventors during the 19th century. Eli Whitney, Samuel Colt, Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison...they all gave this country a reputation that still stands today...no other part of the world can claim America's peculiar enthusiasm and determination to succeed without relying on outside help.

"This country's promise of freedom means more than just the right to bear arms, says William Bygrave, professor of entrepreneurial studies at Babson College in Wellesly, Massachusetts. 'It's the right to do whatever you are good at.' In Bygrave's native England, entrepreneurship was never encouraged. Among academics and elitists, the expression for someone entering trade is 'selling one's soul to industry.'

"Growing up in a free and open society gives us that anyone-can-do-it attitude missing in socialist and communist countries.

Our legacy of entrepreneurship continues to reinforce a reverence for the self-made individual. For all its virtues and flaws, entrepreneurship has continued to make America a country of small businesses, employing two-thirds of the population and contributing billions to our gross national product."