Fireside Chat: An Emerging Model for Enhancing Economic Development

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Welcome back. That wasn't long, was it? We appreciate you for joining our annual SBA Innovation Ecosystem Summit. If you're new to the ecosystem, visit AmericaSeed Fund Us to learn more about America's seed fund and how you can get an involved. All right. To lead our final session of the day with the fireside chat with the leaders of the Ecosystem Builders leadership project is our very own Director of Ecosystem Development, Jennifer Sheen.

Where's the echo? Hello everyone. So we'll, I guess we'll, we'll start to calm it down a little bit. Nah, not really. Well, Beth Zimmer is an entrepreneurship ecosystem builder and so I'm so thrilled to get to say the word ecosystem more and more and also have this conversation with Beth and all of you. Beth supports the development of a nationwide network and the purpose of that network is to enhance and advance the professional field of entrepreneurship ecosystem building through shared leadership and co design. And I'm so excited to dig in and share more about this network through our conversation. So welcome Beth. I'm so glad to have you here.

Oh, thank you. I'm so glad and grateful to be here and it's such a great perfect time for the network to have this spotlight put on it. So we are extremely grateful. Looking forward to digging in.

I'd like to start this conversation with what we each hope to sort of give and receive during this gift of time and attention. So we what are you hoping for? From the audience or from me?

Well, really from you and the audience. We're hoping to inform more people about the project and this emerging network that is it's our goal with this network to truly advance and improve adoption of the practice of entrepreneurship ecosystem building across the country and really to gather more voices around the table. We have, you know, 200 plus people engaged in our community platform. We are always seeking more voices from somebody with no experience that has interest in the field to all the way up to people with 20, 30 years of experience to just lend your voice to this work. This is truly a co design and shared leadership model that we're building and we can't wait to bring more people on to share.

I, you know, I'm excited to, to dig more into like the evolution of all of this and, and, and everything and, and I guess my, my hope is that everybody here listening does see how they provide value to the network as well as where this might be also something of value for them. And so the first thing I want to bring up though of course is, is the term ecosystem builder. Right. Like what, what makes somebody an ecosystem builder?

So an ecosystem builder is really simply people that approach their work from a systems perspective. They're, they're not necessarily focused on being an individual contributor. They see the whole system and they work to understand how different actors and participants interact with each other and how you can, how you can activate that to have more impact. Entrepreneurship building ecosystem builders, we work in communities and regions and states, and even nationally with that systems perspective to help catalyze and support the development and growth of entrepreneurial activity. So we leverage the connective tissue of the environments in which we work to further the impact we can have in helping entrepreneurs start, grow and scale their businesses. Right?

Yeah. And you know, obviously you were talking about how the network itself is, is working to advance ecosystem building and entrepreneurship ecosystem building as a professional field. So I'm curious for you personally, how did you become an ecosystem builder? Or like when did you start identifying as an entrepreneurship ecosystem builder?

Thank you for the question. It was really unintentional how I became an entrepreneurship ecosystem builder. I'm actually a recovering aerospace industry recruitment executive. But when I transitioned my focus to a more generalist role, I became much more engaged in my community and helping businesses that were close in proximity to each other really shine a light for me on all of that connective tissue we talk about every day now in this ecosystem building work. And we're all. The realization came we're all part of this community and we're directly or indirectly impacting our abilities to succeed or not. Then so I began just asking and learning why with all of this connective tissue and other great assets across our community, my, my region. Why was our region less competitive than many others? I live in an amazing place with really an above average pool of diverse talent, really rich history, gorgeous, gorgeous geography, et cetera. But because, so because I can't help but look for that big picture whole system for solutions, one question led to another until I and several others that I recruited over to the cause discovered that our region's culture had become very complacent and risk averse. So not unlike many other regions across the country, we'd forgotten that our economies are, have always been and will always be built by entrepreneurs. We hadn't been cultivating our workforce development ecosystem, our educational ecosystem, our business ecosystems to enable and celebrate entrepreneurial activity. So once we made that discovery, we found then our economic development ecosystem was over capacity. So I volunteered for a few years to help lead these efforts. While we helped build the capacity for the economic development sustained economic development agencies to be able to absorb the work. So it was through that that I learned about the work of the Coffin Foundation's visionary eship initiatives, and I got engaged, got to help lead the e ship work. And ultimately, I'm happy to say all that's led me to the privilege of being here now doing this work. So that's my story as to how I became an ecosystem builder. I think you'll find similar answers with a lot of folks out there. But today, more and more, you're hearing stories of communities and states, even like Indiana and Virginia and others, that are really catching this wave and actually resourcing that third leg to the stool of the economic development work, resourcing that function, the entrepreneurship, ecosystem building function. And you know, in addition to business retention, the economic, important economic gardening work that economic development focuses on and business attraction, adding this third leg really is a great opportunity to enhance our outcomes long term.

Yeah, I think there are a few pieces in there that strike me. I think one of the things that's difficult about describing entrepreneurship, ecosystem building or ecosystem builders is that, you know, we do. It's a mindset, maybe more than it is a profession. Right. And so that's. That's kind of one of the opportunities and challenges also in terms of being able to welcome so many different people in. And so. So I also want to talk a little bit about how you and I got to meet, because about a year ago, you know, Brittany Sickler connected us. Brittany Sickler from the Economic Development Administration connected us to talk about this ecosystem building leadership project. And how did you pitch it to me to join this collaborative advisory group?

That was a long time ago, Jennifer.

A lot has happened in the past year.

It has, but thank you. And so grateful for Brittany for making the connection between us and you and the network. And grateful to you for honoring us and agreeing to serve as the esteemed member of the collaborative advisory group that we were able to form early on. So I remember we talked about entrepreneurship and why it's so important for our nation's economy and how entrepreneurship ecosystem building, being able to catalyze more entrepreneurship activity across the country, more is so key in helping to support our increasing our economic competitiveness. Right. And I remember saying, sharing with you, how excited I was to see that. Here you are, the director of Ecosystem development within our Small Business Administration. To see that is just one of many signs that are starting to emerge that the wave is catching on. So very, very encouraging.

And one of the things.

Go ahead.

Oh, no, please go ahead.

I'm sorry. So we talked about, you know, our, our experiences with the Kaufman, the Ewing Marion Kaufman Foundations led work around the E SHIP Summit and the work that came out of that, the important, very important E SHIP goals that were developed from there and the other related work that came out. And over three plus years we talked to over 2000 entrepreneurship ecosystem builders from all over the world and the clear need emerged for this more formal infrastructure or to support the advancement and further adoption of the work of entrepreneurship ecosystem building. So I explained to you that the Kauffman foundation had partnered up and supported the International Business Innovation association to host this project on behalf of the field of ecosystem building to really co design alongside as many ecosystem builders as we could recruit to the table and co design this thing so that we can serve entrepreneurship ecosystem building as a field of practice for the long term. And we're about nine months into that process and it's been super rewarding and it's so exciting and something I don't think anyone that has been at this, been a part of this project has ever experienced in their lifetime before.

Yeah, I, I really, I really saw, you know, a lot of value and the intentionality in terms of who was being invited to be participating in the collaborative advisory group. I think Brittany certainly knew that I could not say no to a co design opportunity. And actually Charles Ross, who's CEO of the International Business Innovation association nbia, who was the host for this project, he was a speaker at our inaugural Innovation Ecosystem Summit.

Beautiful. I tried to recruit him for this too today.

And actually, you know, I think there what one of the things that I really enjoyed again in the process was this strategic doing workshop that, that happened in Indianapolis kind of. What's that, two months ago now?

I think it was early September. Yes. The months were merging together. Yeah.

So maybe you can describe sort of like that culminating process that's bringing the ecosystem building leadership project into this new phase and where we are now with this network.

Sure. So did you want me to unpack the strategic doing work a little bit?

Sure. I don't know how many people are familiar with strategic doing, but I also found it to be a really interesting framework and process for creation and co creation.

It is really interesting. And for those that aren't familiar, I think if you put it in your search bar, you'll, you'll get a lot of information. It's, it's becoming more and more of a famous kind of way to get things done. But we came together finally in person for a convening in Indianapolis hosted by Julie Heath in the state of Indiana. And we the purpose was to develop projects that would test our ability to come together and really push initiatives forward that would actually advance the field of entrepreneurship ecosystem building. So we had three, three framing questions that we were culminating around. It was define defining the field, improving the field and resourcing the field. And we broke up into teams around those three different questions and the teams came together, developed projects and then developed, created the list of all of the assets they were bringing to the table and then left Indianapolis and have been coming together ever since to continue to advance these projects that are ultimately going to show that we can indeed together advance the field where no one, organization or individual could have possibly done that on their own. We need all of these voices. So those projects are moving forward and we're hoping they come to culmination point first half of 2023. But the the project has pretty much the project to co design has pretty much morphed now into the standing up of this actual network. And we moved from a project support team over to a project leadership team of three co chairs. Those wonderful people were Charles Ross from nbia, Dell Guynes, who is a well known thought leader in inclusive entrepreneurship ecosystem building and with the Federal Reserve in Kansas City, and Kristen Lutz, who's another well known thought leader in the space and former director of the Startup Champions Network. Those three co chairs basically led us through the project and now we went through a democratic process where all the participants of the network were asked to nominate and ultimately elect a provisional council to take this next phase on to formalize the infrastructure of the network into a more sustainable governance structure for within 12 months or less. So the provisional council now is working to create all of that work and will culminate in a plan that will be developed and deployed starting no later than October next year.

So this is a really great time for people to still get involved and engaged. And you know I realize sometimes like I like esoteric policy wonkiness and structure building but I do have to say one of the things I found really fascinating again kind of getting to the intentional nature of this co design process was that the project brought in somebody who studies for an academic career networks and like how do you, how would you be intentionally creating a network that is going to have the the values that would be most supportive for entrepreneurship ecosystem building. So I don't know if you can elaborate a little bit about just how you came to this structure or you're thinking about even just coming up with this bringing in Somebody who actually didn't even realize that of course there's somebody who studies everything, right?

Yes. And the structure of the initial project was developed through the co chairs and I believe the Kauffman Foundation. Dr. Brent Millward is the researcher you're speaking of from the University of Arizona who is amazing. And he was asked to really study other aspirant networks across the world. I guess he, he identified five and studied them and shared with us lessons learned and best practices that he saw with those and helped kind of lead us through our design choices based on the, the working teams that we had established, which were governance. We had a governance working team. We had a team focused on our charter communications network, health and sustainability. And then we had a team that was focused on ensuring that diversity and equity was prioritized through all of those meetings. So we had at least one, if not four members of the diversity team on each of the working teams. So yes, that was. And Dr. Millward will tell you that this is something he's never seen before, where network intentionally went and researched things first and came together like this to co design across the field. So we're proud of that for sure. It was messy at times, but it's been very rewarding.

Yeah, there's probably something really special about this particular community because I think ecosystem builders1 are systems thinkers. So thinking about the connections across, across different networks, but also such amazing people in the community who are very active doers. Right. And so going back to just sort of, we titled this session an Emerging model for Enhancing Economic Development. And maybe this is also kind of a tie back to your origin story about how you became an ecosystem builder. But how would you describe current models of economic development or where entrepreneurship might be disconnected from traditional economic development?

Sure. And you know, I go back and forth personally around are we community building or are we economic development building? But the from an economic development perspective, the important work around, you know, the retention and expansion of jobs and companies that we already have is paramount. It's extremely important. And the work that's done to attract businesses to relocate from other places is important too. And highly competitive entrepreneurship, those things can result in some short term wins that are very helpful and support sustainability of the work, et cetera. Where entrepreneurship ecosystem building work comes in, it's a very long term play. Most of the time for a region to establish that there's really tangible ROI, it can take 15 to 20 years. So and because this practice is an emerging practice, those data are just starting to sprout because it's been maybe 15 or 20 years that this stuff has started. So I think, you know, when it comes to community leadership and elected especially, and I'd love to hear about how the federal government overcomes these things, this paradigm where if I don't have short term wins, what do I have to show for my serve, my time and service here? And I think maybe economic development feels that way too. And I think every community or majority of the communities across the country are, can see that this work. 83 plus percent of the population doesn't like change. So this is a new concept. So to move away from being loyal to the status quo is uncomfortable and it can be viewed with a scarcity mentality. Are these people coming in to take our resources, are they competing with us? Where this work is really meant to kind of be underneath, supporting in, helping to cultivate versus taking away from others, if that makes sense.

Yeah, definitely and completely agree. Working within the federal government, there are many different competing timelines because we'll be having a new Congress start in January and they have their timelines, we have new administrations every four years, their leadership changes. And so, you know, it is, it's often trying to think about, right. The different opportunities that exist. In terms of the things that take a really long time. I think I described it on an earlier panel on funding opportunities for entrepreneur support organizations that, you know, there are the longer term changes that, where we're taking in the input, for example, on challenging application processes and bureaucracies. Right. Where it takes a long time to change the things that have been in place for a very long time. And so we work to do that while we also do sort of shorter term things like improving communication and navigating the existing systems and trying out those, the connections between the two.

Right. So I don't know if we have time to unpack this or not, but I know I am and I'm sure everybody else is very interested in when did the federal government or when did the SBA and the EDA realize that you all are ecosystem builders and in turn now are really supporting the concepts in the programs that you're funding and supporting in so many ways?

Yeah, you know, it's a great. That's a great question. And I don't know. Well, obviously, okay, so my title has the word ecosystem in it and that was new as of March, so it might be somewhat more recent. But I mean, I think that, you know, certainly our office, the sba Office of Investment and Innovation, and probably because we're relatively small office, not a lot of People, we really understand the power of collaboration and networks and partnership. I think we're also, our office is in a fairly unique position within the federal government because we're congressionally mandated to collaborate with the science funding agencies, which again puts us in a really interesting intersection for innovation and entrepreneurship because we work with the technical experts and science funding agencies because of America's Seed Fund and the Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer programs. But we support entrepreneurship like that's the core mission for our agency is supporting entrepreneurs and small businesses. And while so we have that interesting position in kind of the way that we would want to be able to do, like to have the national reach is through ecosystem building. Right. We understand that power of networks. And as Megan said in the last panel, your network is your net worth. Or wait, it might have been the other way around. Your net worth is your network. And yeah, and I think that is also kind of like what this is about.

Right?

There is already value in the ecosystem building leadership project. And now network, we can work on that. And why we have the SBA Innovation Ecosystem network is that the more different perspectives and individuals that are part of the network, you know, the, the more likely there is to be somebody who has the right expertise and skills to connect with and to achieve some common aligned missions. And so I, you know, I know that we'll, we're, we're going to start to wrap up. So I do, I want to ask sort of one question from the audience and then we can talk about those action items, making sure we hit on what should people listening do. The question from the audience is how important is defining and measuring network health for the entrepreneurship ecosystem building leadership network?

That's a great, great question. I think when we say network health, we're talking about really how is the network being sustained and are we actually impacting the advancement of the field and the adoption of the field more broadly. Something I wanted to add, you know, real quickly, we're talking about the adoption and the increasing, the signs of increasing adoption. The International Economic Development Council, IEDC recently released a certification curriculum for entrepreneurship led economic development. So that's just another sign that I wanted to, to show that this stuff is really coming together and this network launching right now to help all of these efforts succeed and come up with more to support our success is great timing. And the more we can all come together around this, I mean it's wonky. There's hundreds and thousands of people out there that are around this work. But the more we can come together with one voice around this stuff and really move things forward. We have a huge opportunity here to change, to change our economy for the better.

Thanks, Beth. And so how, how does somebody listening to this right now know if this is a community that they want to join and how would they do it?

Sure. And I guess if you want, if you, if you're doing the work or you're interested and you think you might want to do the work, this is a resource hub for everything, all things entrepreneurship, ecosystem building. And if we don't have the resources at our fingertips, we know where to go find them. And there are literally hundreds of people on this community platform called Trade Wing that are waiting to meet you and that want to learn from you and that want to help you achieve your goals. And again, this network is really developing to be a co led collaborative force to move this practice forward in the interest of improving our, our economic competitive, collective economic competitiveness across the country. So we need you. So please engage on the, on the Trade Wing platform. The, the link should be in the chat, but it's eblp.tradewing.com and I'm not sure how this works, but don't put HTTPs www in there. I'm not, I'm not a techie, but that's, it's just evlp.tradewing.com and then our website should be there too. But if it's not, it's www.eb leadershipproject.com forward/launch. You can find all kinds of information on there. You can join Train Wing, join Trade Wing and begin engaging immediately. I can be reached at eblp Zimmer mail.com that should do it. Thank you so much for this year. I wish we had more time.

Yeah, I mean we, we have a couple more minutes if there's anything that you want, like final messages. But that seemed like a good action item to close with. I, you know, I, I really want, just want to express my gratitude for you to join this conversation for doing the work that you're doing and for fostering this collaborative community of leaders and having the patience it is the.

Yeah, I'm honored to be here and to be doing this work. It's, it's, you know, very gratifying and exciting and I so appreciate your role in this today and especially the work that you're doing to support everything across the country that you're doing as well as certainly your key role in the network.

Thank you so much, Beth, and thank you to everybody out there in the audience. So I guess we're going to start wrapping up day one.

Yes. Yes.

Thank you, Beth. Thank you, Jennifer, too.

Y' all know the drill. Emoji claps.