Aligning Your Entrepreneurial Ecosystem
Epiphanies Offer Constant Avenues for Creative Pivots
Entrepreneurs that I’m in contact with on an ongoing basis constantly approach me with their newest and greatest epiphanies. Their energy and creativity is core to the establishment of our physical innovative environment. However, these dreamers tend to continually dilute the overall mission and strategy representative of the purpose for their organization’s existence.
With age comes additional truth…we’ll call it ‘wisdom’ for now. Truth, in an entrepreneurial environment, represents the accountability that comes with presenting an epiphany, in the form of a pivot. Chances are, within the entrepreneurial landscape, if you’re brave enough to present an idea with enough passion, you’ve just agreed to expand your job description!
“Therefore, wisdom is a natural stop gap creating cause for pumping the breaks in order to conduct the necessary due diligence before adopting epiphanies as a strategic pivot.”
Startups — Worth Primary Focus?
Traditional start-up communities are full of shifting strategies, exhausting the ethos of co-working environments. This notion begs the question — are traditionally observed startup hubs always the right strategy when establishing an entrepreneurial ecosystem?
Rural mountain resort community decision makers continually grapple with the common concerns plaguing the steering of community vision. A leg of the community sustainability stool is indeed ‘entrepreneurship’, defined by the ongoing influx of fresh perspectives with the potential for staying power.
“However, we all too often incorrectly mix the notion of ‘startup’ with ‘entrepreneurship’; rather, shouldn’t entrepreneurship be considered a textured process made up of different capacities and development stages augmented by the environment?”
Pivot Toward Strengths
To succeed at defining a mountain resort entrepreneurial ecosystem narrative, a community needs to first interpret bigger picture visions within established guardrails. These guardrails serve to map out community distinctiveness — those identifiable strengths that attract and sustain the interests of entrepreneurs at the appropriate stages of development. For example, I help operate a workspace in Avon, CO called the BaseCamp for Entrepreneurs. Our primary focus is cultivating established entrepreneurs/mid-career professionals. We do this by focusing on that segment’s assessed needs, leveraged by our community’s strengths.
Defining this audience required a realization that our environment is not conducive to traditional startups, a truth that we came to grips with after years of trial and error. It took time but ultimately we concluded that established entrepreneurs and location-neutral mid-career professionals almost exclusively supported our efforts. In determining this reality, all of our energy shifted from trying to force a disengaged and uninterested startup population toward graduate level next-stage entrepreneurship development, now a thriving community!
Value Proposition Loyalty
At the center of identifying the narrative for your particular entrepreneurial ecosystem is an environmental assessment. The glamor of venture funds, startups, and launching the next big idea is captivating, but is it truly a good fit for your community?
One litmus test — do you feel as if you are rolling a boulder uphill when trying to establish buy-in? Conversely, do you feel as if your community or organization doesn’t require a sales staff or extensive marketing budget to fill the room?
The later suggests awareness and advancement of an entrepreneurial ecosystem narrative representative of your community’s unique value proposition.
Dr. Kelley — Chief Innovation Officer, Vail Centre
