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Continued from page 39 ICBO

This kind of effort creates jobs for youth and strengthens the economic franchise of minority enterprise. Minority business is bound to benefit as more blacks and other minorities achieve positions of power in major corporations. But that can't happen unless industry makes a special effort to open its doors to the young disadvantaged and offers opportunities for advancement.

Equally important, the ranks of minority business itself cannot grow without new blood. We all need a next generation of experienced young people who know how to fight their way up the ranks of the business world, both within large organizations and as tough individualistic entrepreneurs. Years of discrimination have denied many blacks such opportunities.

A flourishing black business sector also can help meet the black community's desperate need for jobs and can help restore economic vitality to our cities. Most important, it can provide leadership and role models for young people trapped by poverty and despair.

Our free-enterprise system is built on the principles of individual freedom and equal access to opportunity. As long as minorities are denied full participation in our economy, the integrity of our system is endangered. The corporate community, as beneficiaries of the free enterprise system, has an obligation to ensure equal opportunity for all. Supporting minority business is an important part of that effort.

Corporate America can participate with minority business in many different ways. It has the opportunity to do so, and the resources and obligation. Furthermore, it makes good business sense to support minority enterprise because we all benefit from a healthy and prosperous America.

Just about everyone agrees that the prime need of minority business is capital. We all know that black Americans have had little opportunity to accumulate capital. We all know that small companies have limited access to credit and to equity capital. And we all know that high interest rates are a barrier to small business borrowing.

America's large corporations can do something about this. When possible, they can provide equity and debt capital. When that is not possible, they can open doors to other financing sources. At the least, corporations an work closely with their minority suppliers and accelerate payments to ease temporary cash-flow problems.

In addition to capital, minority businesses often need technical and managerial assistance. This is especially true of firms whose rapid growth demands more complex internal organization. Too often, such firms don't have access to the informal, old-school tie network that helped many of their white counterparts cope with the demands of growth.

Corporate America's managerial ranks can also be a resource for business. Corporations can offer a broad range of support, from the temporary loan of an executive to simple access to information.

A third basic need of the minority business community is access to markets. I am encouraged in this regard by the increased corporate purchases of goods and services from minority-owned firms.

But access to markets means more than larger purchases. The future of minority enterprise is directly dependent on its ability to move into the high growth areas of our economy. I am troubled by Andy Brimmer's analysis that "minorities are heavily represented in industries that are likely to grow rather slowly in the future."

Here again, corporate America can help. Corporations, especially those involved in high-growth sectors, can identify innovative opportunities where they can enter into joint ventures with minority businesses to exploit those opportunities. New service industries, new forms of energy use, new technologies, and increased international trade all offer opportunities for mutually profitable partnerships between large corporations and minorities.

Ultimately, each corporation, large and small, can find its own way of lending a helping hand. The flexibility and ingenuity of American business is legend.

A case in point is the story of Martin Turbee, a senior sales executive at NSI's Somerset Importers subsidiary. With the assistance of ICBO, he and his partners obtained $300,000 from Citibank and General Foods Corporation to open a new supermarket in Harlem, the first new minority business in the neighborhood in forty years.

At NSI, we assist minority companies in a variety of ways. One of our main programs involves minority purchases. Each of our operating companies is required to establish annual goals for minority purchases which we review at the corporate level. Our operating company presidents are encouraged to deliver: 20% of their annual bonus is based directly on meeting their minority purchasing and hiring goals. This year, Norton Simon's minority purrchases will total about $25 million, an increase of nearly 50% from fiscal 1978.

This is a problem for the whole nation to tackle. That is why I recently urged American corporations to make a special effort to provide at least 10 jobs to disadvantaged youth for every thousand employees they have. We, at Norton Simon Incorporated, have taken this step.

American industry-even in difficult economic times- has the flexibility to "stretch". It can provide meaningful job opportunities for those young people who would never otherwise get a break.

If the 1,000 largest industrial corporations in the U.S. and the 50 largest banks and retailers did this, 200,000 jobs would be created almost overnight. That's enough to fill New York's Shea Stadium three times, and enough to open the doors to about half the presently unemployed minority youth.

By the same token, small business, which accounts for over half of all employment in the U.S., can also play a major role in tackling the critical problem of youth unemployment. While it is true that employment rolls for minority business are generally small, there is often some flexibility there. Even more important, the members of ICBO are in a position to act as ambassadors for disadvantaged youth. They can be instrumental in making their clients aware of the magnitude of the problem. They can give first-hand accounts of what it's like for young people to lead street-corner lives with no hope for any kind of future. They can urge industry to hire the disadvantaged.

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