Beyond Collisions Book
Learn how to build your entrepreneurial infrastructure
Ecosystem building tips from global thought leaders
Beyond Collisions: How to Build your Entrepreneurial Infrastructure is the field guide to building and sustaining entrepreneurship in your community.
With practitioner-tested and actionable steps, this book will help you develop a deep understanding of what your entrepreneurial community needs and how to deliberately support your entrepreneurs, beyond one-time programs and organic collisions.
Beyond Collisions shares what SourceLink and our network of ecosystem builders have learned about how to build entrepreneurial support networks over the past 20 years, including four actions that communities have used to marshal resources and help entrepreneurs start, grow and succeed.
Purchase Now
You’ll learn:
Why you should care about entrepreneurship
What is an entrepreneurial infrastructure
Who are these entrepreneurs that we want to help
The nuts and bolts of what you can do, in your community, to support and encourage entrepreneurs
Actionable strategies that will help you identify resources that support entrepreneurs, connect them, empower the network and measure results
Get started: Download chapter 6—Measure What Matters
Entrepreneur benefits
Sprinkled throughout this book are stories from the field, firsthand accounts of building networks, encouraging entrepreneurs and analyzing outcomes.
CORE
We’ll address key questions. Why should you care about entrepreneurs, what is an entrepreneurial infrastructure and who are these entrepreneurs that we want to help?
ACTION PLAN
We’ll explain the four steps to building your entrepreneurial infrastructure. What can you do, in your community, to support and encourage entrepreneurs? We’ll identify resources that support entrepreneurs, connect them, empower the network and measure results.
STRATEGIES
Strategies that will help you accomplish the four steps to building your entrepreneurial infrastructure. We’ll share insights we’ve gained about marketing, funding and leadership. Learn the jargon of the entrepreneurial ecosystem with the vocabulary list we wished we had when we started in this field.
"You can't create an entrepreneurial community, they create themselves. You can create the conditions in which entrepreneurs choose to innovate. You can work across government and universities and private-public partnership lines to make it easier for entrepreneurs to start and grow companies."
- Peter DeSilva,
President, Scottrade, Inc.
About the author
Maria Meyers
Maria Meyers, like the organization she leads, is entrepreneurial about supporting entrepreneurs. As founder of KCSourceLink®, Maria created a network that connects entrepreneurs with hundreds of business-building organizations throughout the Kansas City region. She later scaled that network model nationally as founder of SourceLink℠, creating America’s first R&D platform for economic developers and e-community champions.
In addition to her SourceLink accomplishments, Maria is executive director for the University of Missouri–Kansas City Innovation Center, connecting university researchers with the community to ignite collaborative partnerships leading to innovations. At UMKC, she was instrumental in the creation of the Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, establishing entrepreneurship as a mainstream field of study that now offers BBA, MBA and PhD degree concentrations in entrepreneurship.
About the author
Kate Pope Hodel
Kate Pope Hodel has had a front row seat for the entrepreneurial revolution, joining the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation in 1991 when it was just beginning its involvement in entrepreneurship. She directed the Kauffman Foundation’s efforts to develop a national reputation around entrepreneurship, working with organizations such as National Public Radio, the national Entrepreneur of the Year awards and the international board for Young Entrepreneurs Organization.
Pursuing her passion for community entrepreneurship, Kate was the original program officer for the KCSourceLink founding grant. She went on to work for KCSourceLink and SourceLink as a consultant and eventually as staff, helping build networks across the state of Missouri and in select communities nationwide. Currently Kate works on special projects for KCSourceLink, include the We Create Capital effort, KCInvestED, Whiteboard2Boardroom and research into capital access and job creation by early-stage firms.
Podcast interviews
- Build Your Entrepreneurial Community on Action Now CFO podcast with Greg Levine
- Making Entrepreneurship Easier on Entrepreneurially Thinking podcast with Christy Maxfield of Center for Emerging Technologies and Cheryl Watkins-Moore of BioSTL
- Do entrepreneurs need more help these days? on The Small Business Advocate with Jim Blasingame
- What’s the future of entrepreneurship? on The Small Business Advocate with Jim Blasingame
- Winning Where You Stand on The Entrepreneur Way with Neil Ball