Supporting entrepreneurship is a team sport. Community leaders far and wide across the country, beyond the coasts, in big cities and small towns believe in building up entrepreneurs and implementing strategies for entrepreneurship-led economic development.
And we’ve invited those ecosystem builders and champions of e-ship to share their ideas, struggles and best practices for building and sustaining entrepreneurship during our second Growing Entrepreneurial Communities Summit, held April 25-26 in Kansas City. Guest speakers and attendees will collaborate, exchange and create actionable steps to support entrepreneurship in urban and rural communities.
We’ve put together a short list of articles to read before the Summit – your prerequisite readings, if you will.
Move over Buffalos, There’s a New Kid in Town, Penny Lewandowski, Edward Lowe Foundation
Lewandowski uses the analogy of buffalo hunting to walk through how communities are using tax incentives to lure large corporations into relocating. By using this old school method of chasing jobs, economic developers miss the opportunity to invest in growing local business.
The Job-Creating Infrastructure Every Community Needs, Maria Meyers, SourceLink
Our own Maria Meyers is featured in Governing Magazine laying out the steps to creating entrepreneurial infrastructure that supports entrepreneurs. Identify. Connect. Empower. Measure.
Startups and Young Firms Dominate Job Creation, so Why Don’t Our Economic Development Policies Reflect This?, Dell Gines, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City
This article is rich in statistics with all signs pointing to supporting young, local business as a standard in entrepreneurship-led economic development. This is seriously a good read and a perfect source for making the argument for bottom-up economics.
Revisiting the Vision and Mission Statement of Network Kansas, Steve Radley, Network Kansas
We’re sharing NetWork Kansas’s vision and mission statement as an inspiration to entrepreneur service organizations everywhere. At its core, NetWork Kansas puts connecting entrepreneurs with resources at the forefront of its mission. Read this for inspiration.
Entrepreneurship and Communities on the Margin, Don Macke, Center for Rural Development
Macke urges cities to integrate entrepreneurship-led economic development to address poverty and unemployment in distressed communities. “Entrepreneurship-based development enables residents to build community, personal economic opportunity and wealth and ultimately help to create thriving communities that contribute to regional prosperity and American well-being.”
Top Ten Things We Know About Growing Entrepreneurial Ecosystems, Norris Krueger, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
Krueger shares inspirations and implications of growing entrepreneurial ecosystems from the Kauffman Eship Summit held July 2017.
Join in on the conversation
Interested in the Growing Entrepreneurial Communities Summit but can’t attend? Follow the hashtag #growingeship to participate in Summit conversations and subscribe to our newsletter for entrepreneurship-led economic development best practices.
