Quantifying Impact as an ESO

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Hello everyone and welcome back to our third Annual Innovation Ecosystem Summit. We usually have a few new faces after the breakout, so allow me to quickly reset the room and introduce myself. My name is Jamila Corbett, Engagement Director at Established. On behalf of the sba, we're so happy that you've decided to join us today and and if you've been with us all afternoon, you're a trooper. Thank you for being here and if you've been with us for both days, you win the award. We actually host monthly calls with ecosystem builders like yourself, so the party can continue. If you're interested in continuing to get information about America Seed Fund and its programs, visit AmericaSeed Fund Us to learn more and to sign up for these monthly calls. Did you enjoy the breakouts? Give me a thumbs up or a clapping emoji in the chat to let me know. I have a couple of reminders as we continue to move through the program. If you need closed captioning, just click the CC button at the bottom of your screen. If you if you're also experiencing any technical difficulties, maybe you can hear but can't see, or see but can't hear. Don't worry about it. Take a deep breath and refresh your screen. Usually that takes care of the problem. If you're still experiencing those technical difficulties after you do, please email us at supportst us and we'll do our best to troubleshoot. We also encourage you to share your learnings with us on social media using the hashtags hashtag symbol ESL Summit 2023 and see the future. All right, we're going to keep the party going for this final session of the day. We're tackling the topic of how do we quantify impact as an eso? Leading this discussion is Charles Ross, President and CEO of the International Business Innovation Association. With over to you Charles.

Thanks so much, Jamila. Defining and measuring and communicating impact is a critical competency for successful entrepreneurial support organizations. Tracking ESO impact can sometimes be complex, often requiring balancing trade offs between objectivity, rigor and cost. From my experience, esos who are able to best manage these complexities are best positioned to capture the value of quantifying the impact of their efforts. So again, my name is Charles Ross. I'm President and CEO of the International Business Innovation Association. My pleasure to moderate this afternoon's panel on quantifying ESO impact and we're going to tap in today into a panel expertise of a panel of practitioners with experience in not only identifying and measuring impact for their organizations, but also successfully communicating that impact to organizational stakeholders. So we're going to discuss the process of collecting good impact data. We're going the value of such data and the best practices and impact analyses and dissemination. Also, we want to make sure that we address any questions that you have on the subject. So please feel free to shoot us a question through the chat, and we will pose those questions to the panelists as soon as we receive them and definitely towards the end of the presentation. Okay, so to kick off our discussion, let's start with the why. Let's start by highlighting the value of quantifying ESO impact. So why is this important? And to do that, it's my pleasure to welcome our first panelist, Tracy Dunenhoff, who's the vice President of Entrepreneurship and innovation with ASU Knowledge Enterprise at Arizona State University. So, Tracy, welcome to the panel. Tell us a little bit about your organization, how you support entrepreneurs, and then tell us about the why. So why should we care about this? What's the value of quantifying impact for esos?

Well, Charles, thank you. And it's such a wonderful opportunity to be here and share our learnings and learn from each other. So we appreciate the opportunity. So at Arizona State University, we have an organization dedicated to entrepreneurship and innovation across the continuum. Part of it is housed in something called the J orin Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. And we look at entrepreneurial education and engagement, K through 12, and then undergrad graduate faculty and community. So it's really a holistic approach to looking at entrepreneurship as an empowerment tool. And that really leads into why it's so important, important to measure these things and to think very carefully about what it is we're measuring. And the way we look at this is what is it that we are trying to achieve? And typically, what we're trying to achieve is an optimal outcome, an optimal entrepreneurial manifestation for each individual. And that can mean many, many different things. It can be an individual who has a pizza truck. It can be an individual who has a global genetic editing company. And each experience has some similarities, but some things really need to be curated. And so thinking very carefully about what we're measuring, not just things like how many attendees were there at in a particular event or how much money was won at a pitch competition. It's really about that entire journey and being with that entrepreneur, that individual, and their team throughout that experience. It doesn't end once the venture started, once the revenue has started, even once they're in for a couple of years. Entrepreneurship can be a daunting and Very, very challenging journey. And so one of the most important things that we've tried to focus on is community connection, learning from each other, a feeling of belonging, and finding a way for these entrepreneurs and their community to give us feedback, almost voice of the customer type of work so we can continually improve and meet their needs in a very targeted way.

Fantastic. Well, welcome to the panel and looking forward to exploring this, this topic a little bit more. And so thanks for giving us kind of this firm understanding of the why. And with that, let's go ahead and shift to kind of tapping into the how. So our next panelist is Tammy Charles. Love that last name. Director of Corporate relations with the Black Innovation Alliance. So, Tammy, tell us a little bit about. Tell us a little bit about your organization and then share with us how your organization defines success and then the process that you're using for tracking impact.

Love it, Charles. And the feeling is mutual. Love your name too, man. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Tammy Charles. As Charles mentioned, I love this. This is fun. I could do this all day. So excited to be here. Want to give a huge shout out to the team at SBA for putting such an incredible event together. So I am with Black Innovation alliance and we are a network of 116 and counting. We're actually about to onboard another 75 members in the top of the year. And we're a network of organizations. So what makes us interesting is that we're a network of esos and our organizations work with entrepreneurs and we really focus on creating an enabling environment, the environment for entrepreneurs to really succeed. So we really operate at the system's level. So the way we track metrics is actually interesting because we track it at multiple levels. So think of a cake that has different layers. And so for us at the systems level, we have an initiative called the Decade of Black Innovation, and it's really focused on three core metrics. We really believe that we'll have a strengthened national ecosystem specifically for black founders, from ideation to exit, if we were able to raise up 500 black led organizations that are ISOs, we call them innovator support organizations that are serving 1 million entrepreneurs and directing $1 billion plus to the innovation ecosystem. And so the way we're actually tracking our data right now is we're actually really excited because we just started instituting a new social impact impact platform called SoPact. So right now we're kind of like in phase one of really understanding what are the impact metrics that we want to track at the systems at the ISO level and even at the entrepreneur level. And again, when I say ISO, I'm referring to innovator support organizations. And so we're kind of developing the frame. We are actually just three years old, so we're kind of like a grown toddler who can't fit their clothes. But we're kind of like in this growth trajectory process. So this is kind of. We're in a place of trying to determine how do we organize our metrics in a way that will allow us to track the impact of ESOs on entrepreneurs at those different levels. And then at BIA, we're also tracking systems, levels, measures. Right. So we do a lot of policy work, narrative change. And so our goal is to really determine what are the different activities. Going back to what Tracy said that I really love is really thinking about what do we want to achieve. So at bia, we want to achieve the kind of innovation ecosystem where black founders have the access to the networks, the tools, the capital for them to succeed. So what are some of the driving indicators? Well, it's, you know, specifically for our members. We're tracking how many businesses are they serving, how are they helping them access capital, how are they helping them access media opportunities and so on. And then how can BIA be kind of like a convener, a network builder, and supporting and force multiplying those outcomes? And so, and I'll share this a little bit later about what are the challenges and opportunities in doing that. But that's essentially where we sit, is we really want to be an aggregator, a convener of data to really help inform the health of the ecosystem, but also to really kind of share with other broader ecosystem players what are the necessary metrics we should be tracking collectively to really understand how we can collaborate more effectively as ecosystem players to support black and black and black and Brown founders. So I look forward to sharing more.

Great. Fantastic. Welcome. Okay, so then rounding out our panel is our third panelist, Krista Covey. Krista is the president of First Flight Venture Center. And Krista, go ahead and tell us a little bit about your organization. And then understanding that this work of quantifying impact and collecting metrics is not done in a vacuum, and we have an audience for the impacts that we're looking to communicate. Can you share with us kind of the role that organizational stakeholders play in determining not only what gets measured, but then it kind of analysis that we do to the data that we're tracking. So if you can talk to us a little bit about that. And welcome.

Thanks so much. Charles and thanks also to SBA and what a great team putting on an amazing summit. I have just learned a lot and have found this to be very valuable. So appreciate the opportunity to be here. So again, First Flight Venture center is in the heart of the Research Triangle park in North Carolina. And our focus and mission is to help innovators and entrepreneurs turn their good ideas into great commercial successes. And so we're best known for being the, dare I say, the oldest incubator in focused on science and technology in North Carolina. But we're actually an innovation hub. So we do a lot more than just incubate. We actually educate, mentor, provide a suite of services to innovators and entrepreneurs from concept all the way through commercialization and beyond. So we have multiple programs, multiple stakeholders, and multiple types of innovators and entrepreneurs at different levels that we serve. So, you know, we are going into our 33rd year of service. So that's pretty unique for First Light and for many incubators. And I have to say, one of the things that we did not do well many years ago as a nonprofit business incubator is track some of our graduates after multiple years. Right. We've got 33 years of data. That's incredible. So let's go. We, so what we had to do is go back in time and do some research and figure out, okay, who actually, who were the innovators and entrepreneurs that were served and where are they now? And so we, we, we tracked things like, you know, number of employees, of course, number of company starts, where they were, were their investments, were their exits, were there patents, all of that. But we needed to continue that tracking. And I'll tell you a story about a quick story on why that has been so critical for us recently. We operate out of the second oldest building in the Research Triangle Park. So it's a 60 year old building, which is wonderful for so many reasons and really tough for others. We have offices and labs, but we needed some renovation. We needed, you know, we had a lot of deferred maintenance. And so we were able to go to our elected officials in North Carolina and say, you know what, out of the past 33 years we've had over 400 resident company graduates and they have currently 14 billion with a B dollars in market capitalization. That's significant. So that helped us communicate the value of the work that we were doing. And in turn, they were able to give us some, some dollars to help renovate the facility so that we can continue the good work for the next 30 years. So that was just one example of how really tracking has made a significant impact on our operations and how we can serve our innovators and entrepreneurs who ultimately give us back significant impact. So great.

All right, well, welcome. So let's go ahead and dive into kind of the next layer of this. So I'm going to, I'm going to start with posing this question to Tammy, but want Tracy and Krista for you all to chime in. And so, you know, I started off talking about some of the complexities of this effort and talked about just at a high level and quantifying impact or tracking impact. You know, there's like three major processes of one, determining what you're going to measure to doing some kind of analysis on that, and then three, turning that back out and communicating it to somebody into a set of audiences. So just kind of in thinking about those three buckets, could you share like some of these challenges that you've addressed or that you've encountered in trying to put a process in place and tell us maybe a little bit maybe about the challenge itself and then the approaches, the trade offs, the solutions that you've applied to them?

I love this question so much because I'm literally knee deep into this right now. So I took some notes, so I'll try to make this as brief as possible. But this hits near and dear to my heart. And really our members, so imagine again, we are a network of organizations. And again, Crystal, just want to thank you so much for sharing what you did. Right. So like that $14 billion number, like that's a very powerful number and I'm sure it took a lot of work, a lot of just kind of like aggregation to get that powerful number. And you know, for us at bia, because we are a network of ecosystem builders all across the country, I would say there's probably like three different challenges and responses and trade offs that we're considering right now. At least from where I sit in my role at bia, the first one is really balancing the immediate support of entrepreneurs that our ISOs really contribute to and the long term systemic changes. Right. So the short term kind of like data is around like, okay, how many entrepreneurs was served, what would a specific type of programs, what industries are they in? And all that information is very important and we do want to track that. We're also playing the balancing act. So one thing we say at BIA is that we're building kind of like the movement and an institution around ecosystem building. And it's a beautiful process, but it's easier said than done. And so for us, our response is how do we prioritize initiatives based on their potential impact and alignment with our strategic priorities within this year? So we do a lot of strategic, kind of like planning work around, okay, what are some of the short term outcomes we want to see? So even right now, some good examples is really helping to understand what types of programs our ISOs are providing to entrepreneurs and what is the impact maybe on capital, maybe on job creation, maybe on business growth and so on. And so wanting to kind of build a machine to capture that data and aggregate that is going to be really important for us. But the trade off, and this is actually a question that I really love, Charles, because the trade off is making tough decisions on where do we invest our efforts in funds that may not also satisfy immediate needs. And so again at bia we're balancing systemic change and the immediate needs that entrepreneurs have. The other quick challenge I would share is, is really the attribution. And so, you know, really trying to attribute the success of entrepreneurs to specific interventions is quite complex because business growth is very multifaceted. So what is the role of the ESO in supporting entrepreneur? How did that drive business success, customer success for that entrepreneur? What were some of those interventions? What can we learn from that? And then the other aspect of it is what is the role of BIA and really supporting ESO so that they can help entrepreneurs better. So there's like different metrics, different activities. I will share this really quickly. As a side note, at bia we do a lot of work around research. Research really drives our strategic kind of like decisions. And so one research report we recently did is called the Blade Blueprint and it's really focused on how black people are winning in the digital economy. We created eight domains and that research has allowed us to create again some sort of a blueprint around how can we leverage this research to inform our work with the hopes that it will inform some of our activities and our long term and short term progress indicators. And so again, you know, it's the balancing act for us. And last but not least I'll share maybe just one more is duration of outcome tracking. So at bia, and this is like all of us, I'm sure all of us can speak to this, balancing short term, intermediate term, long term goals and outcomes and also trying to do that within three layers. So systems level ISO entrepreneurs kind of looks like a tic tac toe table at this point. And so deciding the duration in which we track are the impact of our members on entrepreneurs. Challenging because what happens in one year is great, but what happens in fires can really give us some really powerful data on how the ecosystem, how healthy the ecosystem is and how it's having substantial impact on that. And entrepreneur as we are now, I'll just end here. Systems level impact tracking, it takes time, it takes resources, it takes infrastructure. So for us, our goal is first really set up. And I love what Tracy said again in the beginning, and I'll repeat that is like what is that North Star for us? How do we define success collectively as a community? And then how do we start creating, how do we start to find the activities that lead to that success and then how do we create the infrastructure to capture that impact? So again, this is something that we're working on as an organization.

Great. And Krista and Tracy, very interested in how you may have solved these or addressed the issues around causality and attribution and then the duration of tracking those participant outcomes. Any best practices you can share there? And let me see, I'll go reverse order, let's say Krista.

Sure. So yeah, Tammy, great point highlighting the five year benchmark. Right. So that can be really important because when you get to five years for a startup company, that's typically some, some indication of sustainability. Right. The, the jobs are sustainable, the business has a good, you know, model to it. But how do you go back? Especially in our case, we've got an incubator and then we also are the fast awardee for North Carolina. And so we're tracking companies across the state. So a very wide region. Right. And so I'll just give you some, some tricks for us for, for our context, it's really challenging to get folks to call us back after five years. Right. And so even sometimes in the incubator they're, they're busy running their companies. And so a lot of, a lot of the tracking is on our end. We have to do the research, but there's a cost to that. Right. So we have to dedicate staff time in order to do the research to, you know, snoop out all the information. We, but I think it's a lot easier and we've learned this if we maintain a good relationship. So once they graduate, once they get their SBIR STTR award award and hopefully multiple, we, we try our best to keep in touch with them. So it's not a cold call after five years. Right. They know who we are, we keep in touch. And of course that's, you know, something that takes a while to.

Get good.

At, I would say. And we're not perfect at. And the other trick that we try to employ is when we have events or when we have boot camps or workshops, we actually try to get as much data on the front end as possible because nobody likes to do the surveys, unfortunately. So that's one trick that we use to get true data at the point of interaction. Right. So if we're doing, you know, fast boot camp, right. We're doing where we need to understand who's attending. Have they applied for sbir? And again, this is very specific for us. But as an example, you can, you can gather this data in an eventbrite, you can do this in a jot form, you can do this on a Google form. And those like Google forms are free typically. So just some little tricks there that have helped us continue to track the success and impact of those that we serve. Great.

Okay, Tracy.

Well, so I guess what I would say is, first of all, love listening to Tammy and Krista's perspectives and there's so much that you guys are saying that really resonates and that make me look at things from some different perspectives. But one of the things that I really like to do is to, to try to think about that stakeholder landscape while we're building out what kind of data we want to collect. Right. Because your funding sources are going to have a much different perspective on what's meaningful to them than your, your clients.

Right.

The people that you're actually serving. And there's everything in between and the community and the, you know, if you're thinking regionally, you know, what does the regional community want? And so, you know, trying to think holistically about that, that data portfolio and then about how can we use data almost as a, almost like a ticket in. So it becomes the, the, the individual sharing that data is incentivized to actually share that information so we can be more curated in the services that we're bringing to them. You know, whether it's helping to find talent, whether it's, you know, keeping them connected with funding sources, making introductions to potential corporate strategic partners, you know, really continuing to demonstrate ourselves as a resource, as an ally, and over the longevity of the business. You know, we talk about the, the time frame, like when do you, when do you shut it off or if you ever shut it off. And I think, you know, it's, it's definitely situational. It depends on what you're trying to do. But I would say, you know, if we focus, for example, on our, our efforts to build out ecosystems within a community, we look at this as a long term play. We look at this as, you know, wanting to not only build that ecosystem and be a resource within it, but also help foster the mindset and the ability for those involved in it to also help each other. So it becomes bigger than any one of us. So, you know, data is, you can run a whole event just talking about the data part of it. And I don't know that there's a perfect answer. It's a journey, but it is critical. And I think, you know, one thing Tammy mentioned as well is the research part of it being data driven in how we present that information, how we use logic to drive our programs, I think is going to elevate all of us. And, you know, the more we can share with each other, the more we're really going to, you know, find impact in these ecosystems that we're all, you know, developing that are so necessary for the future of, for our economy, our society and just humanity in general.

So I am pleased to tell you that our audience is helping us out and they got a bunch of questions for us and we're going to do some rapid fire answers to these questions. I think we got about four minutes left. So first of all, Krista, do you use a CRM to help your tracking?

We do.

We use Monday.com Monday.com okay, Tammy, someone wants to contact you around system level impact tracking. How can they contact you?

I can put my email in the chat or. Okay, that works.

Yep. All right, fantastic. Let's see here. So here's a question about metrics, indicators from an ecosystem perspective says healthy cells keep an organism alive. Not different from ecosystem. Is there any tracking that's being done for the mental health of entrepreneurs? How is that being measured? Any thoughts on there?

That is one of my hot buttons. I don't think it's talked about enough. I don't think it's focused on enough. Being an entrepreneur is like running a, you know, a Marathon. The 3 o' clock in the morning, wake up, how you're going to do payroll. So it's something that we are working on. We're developing programs, we're partnering actually with some of our ventures that have mental health programs that are proactive. Not just once, it's, you know, a real issue. But how do we start from the beginning with an entrepreneur to make sure they take care of themselves, take care of their teams. So I would say, and I'd love to hear what my colleagues have to say, this is number one on our list because if you don't have your own oxygen mask on. You can't fly the plane. So I think it's very important, and I think there's a lot of different opportunities out there and focus on mental health through apps, through other initiatives. But I'd like to hear what my colleagues have to say.

Well done.

Let me interject this here. So Tracy and Krista, if you could. Krista and Tracy, Tammy, excuse me, if you can maybe share, like, in that vein, is there, like an indicator that's not being tracked? You know, when all this work is, you started off as jobs, jobs, jobs. Are there other indicators that are not being tracked? That's kind of on the top of your wish list that you. You'd want esos to start tracking so.

I can share something really, really quick, Chris. So that's fine, because I know we're almost out of time, too. So our blade research, mental health came up organically in that research. And I want to. There was a question that Claire just put in a chat, just really quickly around inclusive spaces and not tokenizing. I think a lot of it, too. And I love Tracy. What you mentioned is just making sure that first and foremost, really like understanding the need of that individual entrepreneur, the collective. So what are the inclusive spaces that we're creating? Because that has impact on mental health. And the research has been very critical. So I think we just have to reimagine how we support different people of all races of all backgrounds, and understanding the unique needs of those different groups of people. But I think it's like the research has been important. It comes up in our blade research and then also us doing deeper analysis around what are those best interventions. So, yeah.

So just a comment on that, too. I'd say, ideally, tracking, yes, the inclusivity, especially in the. The team, the company team, and on their boards and their advisory boards as well. I think that is something we should do more tracking of. We get asked and actually, I think this is maybe like a trend, which is a good thing. We're a nonprofit, so we, you know, do write grants and things like that. And so we're getting more asked, what does the diversity look like on our board? And I think that's great, but I also think we need to think about that for those that we serve as well.

Great. Well, want to thank all of our panelists, Tracy, Christa and Tammy, for sharing your expertise and this perspective. And it's definitely been a pleasure to participate in the third Innovation Ecosystem Summit. Thanks so much.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

To say so little time. I appreciate you all. It's a pleasure.

All right. Thank you, Charles, Tammy, Tracy and Krista. What a fun bunch. Let's give them an emoji or gift round of applause. All right, everyone, we are at the end of our time for day one programming of the third annual SBA Innovation Ecosystem Summit. And unfortunately, this is the end of my time with you. It has been my privilege and pleasure to be here with you all over the last two days. Thank you again for your participation. Thank you for asking questions. Thank you for sharing your time and energy with us. Thank you for all the emojis and gift expressions. We're going to take a quick break and when we return at 4:05pm, we'll share our final remarks to end the day. Stay tuned.