Introducing the AI Ecosystem Canvas
Interested in taking full advantage of the AI technology revolution in your region? Map out all the resources and find out what’s missing!
The concept of Ecosystem Canvas is not new and we are actually partnering with the Founder Institute (FI) which is the organization that has taken this tool and applied it around the world in more than 70 regions (at the city or country level) and counting. The full list can be found here in this link.
Founder Institute’s goal for the Startup Ecosystem Canvas published in 2015 was to address the biggest threat to a growing startup ecosystem, which is not the lack of capital as many still today claim, but its fragmentation and lack of transparency (the original post by Jonathan Greechan, FI Co-Founder, can be found here).
Brad Feld, Co-Founder of TechStars and Foundry Group, also covered the challenges of fragmentation in his 2012 book Startup Communities, and the 2nd Edition recently published provides new perspectives and stories about what has happened over the past decade with the evolution of startup communities around the world.
Using this foundation and fundamentals, we are trying to address a similar problem that we identified where the evolution and adoption of new technologies, like Artificial Intelligence, basically needs a community to build the capacities and synergies in geographic regions to take full advantage of the opportunity these innovations present.
Fragmented ecosystems provide little visibility to the community of the resources available to help them achieve their goals and create value for the region. This characteristic also allows for existing gaps to be kept hidden to nobody’s fault, but with the impact of not having the critical elements to foster a vibrant and growing ecosystem.
One of the first instances where we encountered the manifestation of this problem was while researching the state of the Artificial Intelligence global talent pool and running into Jean-François Gagné’s 2019 report, which provides a very rich view into the more mature regions (North America, Europe and Asia), but not much in other regions like Latin America and Africa.
As we continue our research, the common denominator was the lack of visibility and fragmentation, which is of course the reason why many of these global reports cannot provide a more in depth view for certain regions, and what encourages us to work on a potential solution to this challenge.
Our Solution: AI Ecosystem Canvas
The AI Ecosystem Canvas is a tool and a framework to help community leaders and AI enthusiasts map their regional ecosystem, either at the city, multi-city or even country level, and provide visibility to the resources available and identify gaps that different actors could be interested in solving based on their role.
Our proposed framework for building the canvas for an specific region is to start documenting all the relevant actors in the Artificial Intelligence space in a Google Docs template (pictured below) that follows the same structure as the canvas.
The template provides a guide and best practices on how to use the template and we have also build a section in our website to consolidate the evolution of this effort and provide visibility to published and work in progress canvases here: https://www.gethackers.co/canvas
Finally, it is very important to make sure that this is a live document and continues to be updated given the dynamic nature of the ecosystems, where organizations and individuals may come and go, and it is critical to curate the resources to ensure that in this particular case are really relevant in the Artificial Intelligence community and not any generic resources.
Product: AI Startup Ecosystem Canvas Infographic
In order for the canvas to be an effective instrument for a region, it needs distribution and allies to get the word out about the effort to map the ecosystem.
Using an infographic like the one below and other social media formats we can provide, it is proven to be a great strategy to get distribution across local media, mailing lists, groups and social platforms with extremely high virality. People really love infographics and social media attention!
Call to Action
Our team started creating the first AI Ecosystem Canvas focusing in LatAm, but we would love to see many more canvases being created by regional leaders (either individuals, organization or informal groups with passion for Artificial Intelligence), so please fill out a form here if you are interested in a canvas for your region and we will provide all the necessary support, including publishing the infographic.
We would also love to hear your thoughts and feedback on this initiative, and how we can make it even better to benefit as many communities as possible.
Please also get the word out by sharing this article with anyone in your networks that could be interested in collaborating with us. We would really appreciate your support!
Ignacio Castro is the CEO & Founder at Get Hackers. Follow him on Twitter @icastrocr
