Cultivating and Connecting Economic Ecosystems
(And Why I’ve Made it My Life’s Work)
Several decades ago, I faced what financial fallout from the loss of industry does to the communities under its wing. In rural Alabama where I grew up, the dependency (economic, social, political) on one source of jobs was devastating — my family was only one many that quickly spooled from middle class into poverty. Across much of the south, the rust belt, and other once proud strongholds of the American Industrial Revolution, this experience is familiar.
Fast forward a couple decades, I received a fellowship opportunity with the Harvard Kennedy School. Building on what I went through as a young kid in a trailer, a frequently forward-deployed Airman, and a civil servant responsible for shepherding public-private partnerships with seamless economic & community integration with military bases (both at home and abroad), I decided to study mass atrocity response operations. My experience in many of the most diverse human ecosystems in the world — both positive and negative — compelled me to research more deeply the implications of economic instability and community resilience. Following this opportunity, I left behind both my government job and academic endeavors to pursue further research on what things go wrong leading to environments much, much worse than the one I grew up in. I hope now that my LinkedIn profile makes a little bit more sense.
Academically, economic ecosystem design is nothing new. As far back as 1891, Irving Fisher (Yale’s first Ph.D. in political economy) illustrated economic simulation through the design of a plumbing system. In 2007, Jon Rynn published a piece comparing the components of a forest ecosystem to the economy, showing the relationships between producers, consumers, and the ecological groups of herbivores, carnivores, and detrivores.
But it wasn’t until 2012 when Victor Hwang and Greg Horowitt published “The Rainforest: The Secret to Building the Next Silicon Valley” that there was an executable approach. They operationalized the cultivation and connection for the startup communities — and T2 Venture Capital’s “Rain Forest Canvas” then nailed it home for me.
“The formation of thriving innovation ecosystems requires that their leaders possess an acute understanding of the ecosystem’s constitutive parts and their optimal arrangements, as well as how to chart and implement a path to maximal value generation.” — therefinery.org
This mapping of the ecosystem (see the Kauffman Foundation’s “Enabling Entrepreneurial Ecosystems”) is truly the first domino that needs to fall before the cultivation and connection can begin. Creating an inventory, plotting inter/intra-relationships and frequency and volume of resources is critical. Even more so is the validation of competency/capacity of both the entrepreneurial and civic community members.
Now, equipped with both an academic and executable understanding of an ecosystem, coupled with my life’s mission to foster community resilience to economic sustainability, and team passionately in pursuit of the same, humble ventures has entered the scene.
humble ventures is itself an economic ecosystem (so meta, right?) — a cooperative that believes the best way to realize opportunity is through collaboration between startups, established corporations, investors, non-profits and economic development arms. Our ecosystem has three major sub-climates: impact (our non-profit arm that responsibly shepherds startups in underserved communities, led by women, minorities, and military veterans), innovation (our corporate innovation arm), and investment (capital investment and continued growth engagement). We devote our time through intellectual, human, social, political, and financial capital into those ecosystems we’re working to cultivate and connect.
This collective strategy for engagement, development, and impact delivery is difficult. Throughout our travels, we find philanthropy (corporate and foundation) and government (at all levels) are enamored by quantity over quality and speed over responsibility. humble impact is not deterred, though. We’re partnering with like-minded organizations, institutions, and individuals to deliberately plot the best course of action to deliver on the promises of capitalism.
On November 14th, 2016 we will host the Partnership on the Potomac with the support of the Alexandria Economic Development Partnership. The humble team will be announcing a very exciting partnership on how we plan to optimize technology to collect, coalesce, and communicate the many ecosystem maps for true cultivation and connection. Stay Tuned!
