Where are the Gaps in Federal Support for Innovation Ecosystem Builders?

Great. Thank you so much. And so this, this is not the last time you will be seeing this slide, but as I kicked off this session, I wanted to give you all a little bit of a glimpse of what I'm going of what I'm going to be asking you all to discuss and share today. So again, please do not feel stressed to memorize this. This is really kind of just to get your thoughts going as I give a very quick overview of my office so you all can have an understanding of kind of the perspective that I'm bringing and also kind of the work that we do within our office as well. So again, I'm Allison Evans. I am an Entrepreneurship Ecosystem development specialist in SBA's Office of Investment and Innovation. So you are likely familiar with some of these programs, these words on the screen, because you are either funded through these organizations or you have heard about them over the past few days. But for those of you who may not be as familiar, our office has three main divisions. One is our Investment Division, which is the Small Business Investment Company program. And you can think of that as the private investment arm of sba. So your venture, your equity investors and different types of private investment. On the other side of the screen is our Innovation Team. So within that team they oversee the Federal and State Technology Partnership Program which provides direct grant writing assistance for entrepreneurs that are interested in applying to the Small Business Innovation Research, also known as SBIR or or the Small Business Technology Transfer, also known as STTR grant programs. And then lastly, the team that I sit in is our Ecosystem Development Division. And so in this division we oversee two grant programs or two award programs. My apologies. One is the Regional Innovation Clusters and the second is the Growth Accelerator Fund Competition. And so in addition to overseeing and running these programs programs, we also sit in the middle of our office and work to build public private partnerships to drive investment towards some of our most innovative companies. And through that we are really look to be true partners with you all and ensure that our programs are responsive to your needs. And so kind of in that, in that vein, this is kind of our working statement or working goals for what our office seeks to achieve. And it's really with this desire to connect and support the networks and stakeholders helping high growth small businesses. That is the spirit that I want to bring to this session, really hearing from you all about the work you are doing, the challenges you are experiencing and the feedback that you are able to provide today. We can directly, not always immediately, but we are able to think about how to address that either through directly in the programs that we fund. So including kind of different priorities in a solicitation. Or we can share our feed the feedback we receive with our colleagues across the sba, but also across the federal government. So as you are thinking of kind of responses, feedback, ideas to these questions questions, if you're kind of wondering, this may not be like an SBA priority, it may not be entirely small business related, please do not be shy just because it may not be something we can immediately address within our office. We do have a wonderful opportunity to share the feedback that you all provide today with our programs, again across our colleagues and again across sba, but across government as well. So I am going to stop sharing my screen and I'm going to be able to put these questions in the chat as we start to discuss them, but I'm going to stop sharing my screen so that I can actually see all of you. So I'm going to take one pause on the content and cover a couple of housekeeping items. So again, this session is really meant to be interactive. So at the top of your screen you should see a big red button that says start or stop sharing Audio video. If you would like to provide feedback to any of those questions you just saw, it would be wonderful if you could start sharing your audio and then you're going to be able to come off of mute and directly talk with us, all of us. If for some reason or another you are not able to share your audio or prefer not to, please do not think that does not mean you can provide your feedback. Please use the chat. And so I do ask you if you are providing feedback in the chat, please put the number of the question that you are responding to just so we kind of know the context with what you are sharing. And additionally we have, we have, it looks like we have about a little over 20 people with us currently. Some additional folks could join us throughout the session. So really in the spirit of providing an opportunity for everyone to provide their comments, please try to keep your feedback to about 90 seconds and then I will be rapidly taking notes and then if I have any clarifying questions for you, I will make sure to ask. So does anyone have any kind of questions before we get started? All right, great. Well, so our first discussion question for the day is, and I'm going to put it in the chat as well, so do not feel the need to memorize it is what is the mission of your eso, your entrepreneur support organization? And if you feel comfortable sharing what is the biggest challenge you experience in achieving your Mission. Is anyone willing to be the first brave person to come off of mute?

Absolutely, Allison. I started to speak in the chat and happy to expand on my answer just a little bit more with the 90 seconds that you'll give us.

Thanks, Chuck.

Again, I'm Chuck Tyler. I'm the CEO of Veterans Intellectual Property. And we provide not only connecting attorneys who have their pro bono hours to contribute to veterans seeking to protect their innovations, we also raise money to help offset the USPTO fees for veterans because both are barriers attorney access and USPTO fees in protecting our veterans, active duty members and military dependents, innovations and ideas. And one of the challenges I'm finding is networking with the federal agencies. I attended yesterday's USPTO Innovation Summit and Mark Madrid was on there and we had emailed Mark Madrid back in July when we were ready to expand and introduce ourselves to federal agencies and he indicated that, oh yeah, okay, great. You know, sounds like a great organization. Please get in touch with us. However, I had already reached out to them in July and so I'm just wondering what's the best way to network with the federal agencies? First of all, I mean, obviously people are going to need financial resources, grants, loans, things of that nature that the federal government does offer. But first, how do we network? How do we let federal agencies know that we exist?

Chuck, thank you. Thank you so much for providing that. And certainly I don't think the first person to experience this challenge and it is so incredibly valid, especially when we heard in the last session, right. Like some people aren't even aware that they can try to connect with federal program managers or officials. But then when you do realize you have that option, what is kind of the best way to go about doing that and to get in touch with the right folks and to receive a response? So I'm wondering, does anyone else who is willing to come off of mute and share their experiences have you had this challenge? And if so, have you had a way that you feel is best to overcome that challenge? And if you are just joining us, you should see a big red button in the top right hand of your screen that says start sharing audio and video. Please feel free to share so we're able to hear your contributions and your feedback. So, Jacob, thank you so much for sharing in the chat. Oh, and we just got a note from our organizers. Share audio and video. Blue button found at the top of your screen. So blue or red. Sorry for misidentifying the color. Jessica, thank you so much. So Jacob, I'm seeing in the Chat from you. I think the biggest challenge is artificial silos and the inability to recognize ecosystems as complex adaptive systems. There is so much work to be done around the echo tones and edges of our ecosystems and to connect, disconnect connected ecosystems that can learn from each other. The ecosystem building leadership network is doing a lot of great work in this area and should perhaps be more integrated into the federal funding programs. Jacob, thank you for that. Much appreciated.

Sorry, that was a lot.

No, no, no, it's good. Is there anything that maybe you want to emphasize you think isn't as easy to express in the written word?

No, I just think that network is amazing and it's been really cool to connect with federal agencies, rural, urban, international, and to learn from each other. And I think more of that sharing going forward is going to be really important for like the increasing complexity of the world.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, and Jacob too, I hope I'm not taking too much, too much leeway in connecting a little bit of that with Chuck's comment as well. But I do know those networks a lot of times can attract federal program managers. So I think, Chuck, that is maybe one way of kind of getting looped in with that network because there, there are some federal colleagues that are involved and the more we see these groups that are bringing together, federal officials, local and state government officials as well with our private sector partners, that helps to better drive those kind of back and forth communication channels. So does anyone else want to share about the mission of your ESO or some of the biggest or one of the biggest challenges you experience? And feel free to share your audio or provide your feedback in the chat.

I'm not running an eso. We're a support organization for networks. But I wanted to say to Chuck's.

Question.

Like most networking, the most success that we've had in getting a hold of federal agencies is by looking on LinkedIn, seeing who we have a second degree to get connection to and, and then getting warm introductions to actually get the people that we need to talk to on, on the phone.

Thank you so much for that, Christina. Much appreciate. Well, so to keep us moving and please, if you continue to have thoughts or something kind of comes to mind, please don't feel like you can't address it to a previous question, even if we are moving on. And since we're now a little bit under the 30 minute mark for the time we have left together, I would love to move on to the next question. And I am again putting it in the chat. What is one organizational advancement you have made recently. And then how was it achieved? And so I just put that second question in the chat. But to give everyone a couple moments to consider it, I want to share a comment we received from Melina. So MBI's biggest issue lately has been our location. We, and I'm going to apologize in advance, any location in Massachusetts I have a hard time pronouncing correctly. We are located in Worcester, Massachusetts, which is overshadowed by Boston, but we do love Boston. We are doing very well here, but we are really trying to make a name for Worcester. We were recently named in the top 15 talent clusters in the entire country. Melina, thank you so much for sharing that kind of this idea of being on the periphery of these kind of really big metropolitan areas that maybe they themselves have made a name, but kind of don't want to take all of the energy out of the room. So thank you so much for sharing that. All right, so any comments on that second question? So what is one organizational advancement you have made recently and how was it achieved? Hi, Susan. Welcome.

Hello.

Hello. Were you coming on camera to share response to the most recent question?

Yeah, actually, that and the first one. So, so I've, I'm a serial entrepreneur. I tell people I have three MBAs, and that means I have three massive business accidents. So you can laugh at that. But, but because of that, I really fell in love with how to help entrepreneurs. And what, what I, I think in the entrepreneurial education is severely missing. And it sounds so simple, but it actually would be an easy problem to tackle because there's certainly fantastic entrepreneurial programs out there doing tremendous training. But what they're not, there's a gap in there's a difference between access and affordances. When I say affordances, I'm talking about how we as humans navigate opportunities and threats. And because in the old structures there has been an embedded amount of safety, a safety net, you might say, of how due diligence is done. So we also think about it on a personal level as far as discernment. That takes metacognition. It takes critical thinking skills and what I run into with very successful entrepreneurs, but especially with those that are just getting started, they really don't have a sense of structure and strategy, which are two different things. And there's a way to actually give them a tangible basis for understanding structure and strategy and due diligence. And that is through using negotiation as context for learning. And so when these, when these companies are coming and they're trying to get access to capital, they end up wasting a lot of time because they don't know what they're asking for. They don't know what they don't know. So, so just something to think about in terms of how do you prepare someone to, and I'm going to use this term lightly, but keep a journal of what you know, what steps have they already taken so that someone who has technical expertise doesn't have to reinvent the wheel over and over and over again. And, and then to the second one. You know, I'm technical expert in organizational design development, perform performance management programs. They're all built for a very stable environment which we are not in today. And so one thing that I hear some of the, the lingo, and this is not by any means a, a criticism, it's just that, it's just that when we use words like capacity and capabilities, there's no line of sight for them to understand what that means. And yet understanding capacity and capabilities comes back to due diligence. And so organizational capacity, even technical experts who have many years of organizational design all have different definitions for that. So some of the basics could be built into a lot of the entrepreneurial training that would actually use a ladder. And I show, you know, where most entrepreneurial training comes in is coming in up here. These people are down here and they need, they need a ladder, they need scaffolding to be able to not only navigate the business side, but the human side. And that human side also connects to well being and resilience. So there's, you know, there's a lot of research being done around resilience engineering, a lot of brilliant work being done, but there's just these gaps in the nets that if they were filled, I think that because people want it, they just can't grasp it, if that makes any sense.

Yeah. So what I'm hearing for you, one I think is simplification of language and then understanding that even just the navigating of finding these supports so services, that's, that's a lift for an entrepreneur. So being able to directly speak to them through that but also help them kind of level up.

Yep. And making it okay for them to say, I don't understand what you're talking about. Because a lot of times the lingo becomes a. Well, I'm not smart enough to recognize it. I can't ask that question. So getting some of the training there with the trainers, probably also in being able to recognize when that's, when that's a hindrance.

Absolutely.

Well, Susan, you're getting some agreement in the chat. So you're with the right folks. Awesome.

I'll log off.

Before we move to the next question. Did anyone else want to share a recent organizational advancement and how and how you made that accomplishment? Jacob, I know you had said you wanted to share but wanted to kind of hold space for others.

Yeah, mine's quick. I think it's just been advancing some of the metrics we use and kind of honing in ecosystem mapping, but then being more strategic with looking at small Main street businesses, high growth tech businesses, and how do you create like clusters of those to support like a higher livability, especially in rural areas? So I think that's been. Eigenvector is like the metric that I've been really stoked on.

What was that metric again?

Eigenvector. It shows centrality in a network. And so like clustering these lifestyle and main street businesses around the tech companies then creates a more livable rural, especially in rural America. It creates a better livable community so they stay longer.

All right, well, I will, I will keep us moving to the next question. And again, for anyone that just joined us, please use the blue or red button at the top of your screen that says start sharing audio and video if you would like to provide any feedback. If you do not have the capacity to share that, you can please participate fully in the chat. And so our next question, what types of assistance do small businesses need most in your community?

Hello, Allison. You went on mute.

I was, I was saying welcome. Did you want to jump in on this question?

Yeah, sure. What kind of assistance do our small businesses need? I think it, I'd like to think it's whether it's different for tech businesses as it is for a brick and mortar. Someone wants to start a small store for the small store starters, which probably isn't the reason we're all here, but that's basic understanding of how a business operates and funding and how to apply for a loan and then how to manage their business and not how to work in their business concepts that they need to kind of get a better grasp on. And for the tech businesses, I think, as Susan pointed out, the founders or the innovators coming in want to start with how great their prototype is, but they've skipped the first X number of steps in understanding. You know, am I building a solid foundation for my business? And then what does that, what does that even mean? You know, to that point, I usually describe it to my clients because I'm a small business advisor in innovation and technical in Vermont at the Small Business Development Center. What it means to my clients is they need to understand the landscape of the business they're operating in and is that business viable and it doesn't meet their needs. And I think when I work with them to answer those questions, if we get to the point where they can answer those questions, then they could decide whether, you know, it's worthwhile moving forward, whether that's getting a patent, whether it's finding funding, or whether it's finding the right talent. So there's probably a lot of steps in there that I just talked about, but that was my answer.

That's great. So, Scott, yeah, Kind of the main things I heard were really kind of understanding what are the foundations of your business, not jumping right to how cool the technology is, which I think is sometimes Right. The more fun conversation. But how do you build everything else up to support the continued development of that technology or service?

Yes. Thank you.

Scott. You're getting agreement in the chat, which is great to see. Does anyone else kind of want to follow up on anything Scott just shared, or do you have other types of assistance that you see your small businesses in your communities needing most?

I'd love to hear from anybody running an eso, what support they need.

Yeah, thank you for that, Christina. So again, to reiterate Christina's question, for any esos that we have in the room, what do you all need?

I'm also going to pop back on again if it's okay to share this, but a few years ago, I worked for a company who was exercising an NIH grant on commercialization, and I was a small business advisor to people who wanted to start assistive technology and medical device products. Anyway, so we developed a set of resources. I'm going to pop it in the chat. It's free. Anybody wants to use it, they can. This is what I use for my clients.

Thanks for that, Scott. And then Tasha, I hope I'm pronouncing that name correctly. Apologies if not. Christine, in response to your question, what support esos need? Tasha responded, broader network of mentors for startups. Absolutely. Thank you so much for that contribution. And then Scott, I'll just. Also just dropped in the chat the resource that he had just commented on. So make sure you click that and have it saved. So any other comments, feedback for types of small business assistants that your small businesses need most or also that our esos need?

I'm gonna, I'm gonna drop back in one more time because I think there's, there's also a need for the esos to get smarter in cybersecurity. I think there's a bigger push for it, and it feels like it's not the top. It's not in the top of my agenda to talk with my clients, but that's probably because I'm not a specialist at it.

All right, well, I will keep us moving forward. Thank you already for everyone that is coming off mute, sharing your responses either via your microphone or in the chat. I'm collecting all of it and is much appreciated. So moving to kind of one of the final questions. What challenges do you face in building partnerships with within your ecosystem? And I am putting that in the chat as well, Allison.

I think I can speak to that one. So I'm with mbi Massachusetts Biomedical Initiatives. I was commenting earlier in the chat. A big thing that we try to do is we work with startup companies and then help them commercialize, get the resources they need and all of that. And one big thing that we're trying to do really is connect them with industry while they're at a smaller stage so they can form partnerships or potentially like buyout purchases, whatever. Like, they can work together. So our biggest issue is kind of just setting that precedent for, hey, we have a really good company. You should come and check us out. And kind of like I mentioned earlier, where Boston overshadows us a little bit. Worcester is getting a very good, we're getting a very good name now because of all that's happening out here. But just pulling more industry and being like, hey, there's a lot of innovation happening in this area. So I guess it's just kind of getting them to commit to listening to our people speak or getting them the right connections within their company and like, it is slowly happening, which is wonderful. But that, that's, I would say, the biggest issue that we sometimes face.

Melina, thank you so much for that. So just to make sure, I understand. So kind of almost you all developing the relationship and the reputation of when you're asking these larger industry partners to come look at a small business that the small business is really worth their time to look at.

Correct?

Yeah, got it.

Yes.

And I'll do a quick plug for you. MBI is a GHAFC winner and working with Allison and Maura has been. Been wonderful. So I recommend everybody apply to that next year.

Thank you, Melina. Much appreciated. And yeah, if you all are interested in the Growth Accelerator Fund competition. Melina, I hope I'm not overstepping, but you can go on AmericaSeed fund us and see the directory of our most recent winners and see the incredible work that they're doing in mbia. And I'm sure Molina would be more than happy to chat through their work and provide advice on the application process.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. I'll stick my email in the chat as well.

Great.

Thank you so much.

Of course.

So any other feedback on what challenges do you face in building partnerships within your ecosystem?

I don't know. So this is a little bit different than what the question is. And that is, I think, you know, in Vermont, we actually have a lot of partnerships and maybe it's just because of our small state, we, we also have a lot of technical assistance providers within the state. And if there's, I think if there's a single challenge, it's probably working with the state government to fund those programs to help improve the economic assistance providers.

I can add one that I've heard.

A lot.

Is entrepreneurial ecosystems often have a high percentage of people who are defaulting to kind of a competitive mindset. And a little bit of knowledge is power, which is very kind of 20th century, because now learning is power. And the faster you can do that, the better off you are. Which I think a lot of tech and advertising kind of industries have gotten that. But many, many industries are still lagging behind. And so I would suggest I've seen a need in, like I'm a network service provider. I do system and network mapping and, you know, work with ESOs and coalitions and, you know, networks of groups in all different shapes and sizes. And I've seen a real need for supporting people to learn how to work in networks. That's not one on one networking. That's really defaulting to working out loud. That is kind of pushing their learning edge towards being able to share openly as the default and then strategically maybe pull some stuff back rather than just being quiet all the time and then sharing only when really prompted strongly. I'll put a link in the chat to one of the sort of ways that you can create that kind of health. But that's a need that I would love to see the SBA support.

Christina, thank you so much for sharing that. Such an intriguing, interesting point. And I will say that is a conversation that we have within our office of so many, I mean, so many of our programs are focused on building up and supporting the ecosystem. So how do we kind of start to address what can sometimes feel very natural, having that more competitive mindset and we're kind of working with, as we put funding out, how can that be used to incentivize the partnership building and the expansion versus this kind of narrowing of the network when it, when folks are responding, you know, to a pot of money. So thank you so much for sharing that and anything you can provide towards that to help us on that goal would be much appreciated. So does anyone else want to comment, come off mute or share in the chat about challenges you are facing in building partnerships within your ecosystem or kind of just really getting the ecosystem started in your respective areas or communities?

I think an element that's often overlooked is like historical context. I live in Southern Virginia, so there's a lot of historical context that you need to take into account if you're going to be building ecosystems systems. Good.

Thank you for that. All right folks, so we are in the last five minutes so one, thank you for all the amazing contributions that have already been provided. Much appreciated. I have one final question, but I'm also kind of making this the what else portion. So if there is a question that I don't know to ask ask or that I haven't asked today that you would rather respond to, please feel free to do that now or kind of share any feedback that you don't feel you've had a chance to share. But I will also kind of give one last prompting question and that is are there programming or resource models that you like? It could be at other federal agencies. It can be from a philanthropic organization or from your local area or your state.

State.

So this is really kind of our last five minutes. You can respond to that question or kind of share anything else that you wish to in our final moments here together and as folks kind of give that a thought. I will share. I see one comment in the chat from Alex saying that in South Dakota with the hemp industry, it's still in the Wild west and all of us involved in it send a lot of time trying to make laws favorable for the industry. Alex, thank you for that. So yeah, again I think kind of understanding how is the state supporting your respective ecosystem and understanding the industry that you're working in. So thank you for that. All right, so I'm seeing a few comments in the chat, so thank you so much for everyone for providing those. So from Jacob, the collaborative process for some of the NSF grants has been really cool, utilizing airtable and paint hearing applicants. Jacob, that is not the first time we've seen NSF celebrated for their collaborative platform. So thank you. Thank you for sharing that. Again, a good reminder. And then Susan, partnerships require a depth of understanding of how to structure proposals and face conflict and competition head on. Social scripts about win, win. Don't help those in the whirlwind. Practice has to be in a safe setting before negotiations can occur. Thank you for that, Suzanne. And then I see one question from Judith, so anyone please feel free to message Judith directly or provide feedback in the chat. They work in the Blue Economy, which is an emerging ecosystem. Any words of advice on cooperation versus competition at early stage ecosystems? And Judith, I would initially recommend you to go to AmericaSeed Fund US. Some of our growth accelerator awardees are specifically working within the Blue Economy, so there could be some good organizations for you to reach out to. And then so we have one minute left. So does anyone else want to come off mute and share final thoughts, words of wisdom for us?

Allison I was just going to add that one of the challenges some of the tech entrepreneurs have is finding, finding, finding skill sets that they don't have. They don't know where to look and they don't know how to seek them out. So funding is one, but finding the team members to help them be successful is definitely a challenge for them.

All right, well, so we are at the 25 mark on the hour. Thank you so much to all of you for participating. As you probably already gleaned, this was a bit of an experimental session for us within the summit. So really appreciate you all coming along with us and sharing the feedback. I will put my email in the chat. Please do not hesitate to reach out. And please let's I'm excited to see you all in the main stage for our last few sessions of the summit. Thanks all.