Growing globally competitive headquarter companies is a relatively new economic development approach for the Upstate. But with every passing day, there is an increasing appreciation here for high-impact entrepreneurs and their companies as they generate significant new jobs for the area while generating greater community wealth over the long term.
Attracting and growing innovative young companies requires communities like ours to build supportive entrepreneur ecosystems that provide critical inputs and targeted services to early-stage ventures and their founders. Inputs like investment capital, world-class talent and specialized service providers are needed if high-growth companies are to start and thrive here.
In a region known more for our large industrial base and international branch manufacturing, the Upstate has made great strides on this front in recent years, creating elements like the Upstate Carolina Angel Network, the NEXT Innovation Center and the recently launched Venture Mentoring Service in partnership with MIT. In less than 10 years, our community has created an up-and-coming entrepreneur support landscape, though we still have much work to do.
However, while we work daily to improve the individual ingredients of our ecosystem like talent, capital, and facilities, we must become more aware of a lesser-known aspect that is critical to thriving entrepreneurial communities: the important role of fostering connections or “mixing” entrepreneurs within the ecosystem.
The most important factor in driving entrepreneurial success in a community is not the creation of any one particular support element or the support of any one outstanding entrepreneur. Instead, it is the deliberate and planned mixing of entrepreneurs with one another and with the larger ecosystem that generates the greatest value.
Fostering intentional collisions and interactions within the tribe of entrepreneurs and across the larger community is the most effective and efficient way to connect needed resources and to generate breakthrough new ideas. While this seems like common sense on the surface, very few regions put the needed emphasis on creating peer and ecosystem connections, and thus the long-term economic results are sub-optimized.
Think of it this way. Like fostering high-impact entrepreneurship, baking a loaf of bread requires a variety of individual ingredients. If placed in a bowl together with no stirring or kneading, bread ingredients like flour, yeast and water do not come together to form dough for bread. As such, bread recipes provide clear directions on mixing and kneading the elements together to unleash their unique capabilities once combined properly.
Entrepreneur ecosystems perform in much the same way and require mixing and kneading to drive optimal results. While each individual element is important, they do not produce success in and of themselves. Instead, the entrepreneurship recipe calls for vigorous and regular mixing of founders with one another and with the ecosystem at large to produce breakthrough companies and the resulting benefits to the community.
NEXT engages with approximately 20-30 new growth companies in the Upstate each year as we attract more and more entrepreneurs here. Typically, the first request from these new entrepreneurs is an overview of the entrepreneur resources in the area with the second request centering around specific, personal introductions to various entities and individuals that can benefit their company.
As a result, NEXT acts much like a concierge service for its entrepreneurs as it addresses various company needs and requests by mixing the CEO with appropriate resources, allies and individuals in the area. There is also an online vehicle for mixing entrepreneurs with the ecosystem – a weekly e-newsletter called NEXT Up that compiles all of the regional entrepreneur news and events into one simple place entrepreneurs can scan for items of interest. Such tools and services are very simple, yet essential for mixing entrepreneurs with the activities and allies around them.
Perhaps the most important mixing that can occur within an entrepreneur ecosystem is within the network of entrepreneurs themselves, as peer connections can provide value in many ways including sharing best practices, fostering new connections and generating potential business partnerships. Entrepreneur-to-entrepreneur connections can even result in new business formations as combinations of products and capabilities across multiple companies can often create breakthrough market introductions. To foster these connections and stir up the entrepreneur network, NEXT facilitates a variety of scheduled and ad-hoc meetings and events designed specifically to introduce entrepreneurs to one another and to encourage open dialogue about their market issues and opportunities.
Without intentional mixing of the entrepreneur community, company founders are often left to fend for themselves and find it a struggle to identify and connect with one another and the resources that can help them succeed. They are very busy people and often have their heads down working within their individual companies closing sales, building better products and making payroll. Thus it is critical that as we work to build stronger individual support elements like talent, capital and facilities, we must apply similar value to the behind-the-scenes service of “stirring vigorously” to ensure our entrepreneurs are connected and engaged with all the aspects that can help them succeed here.
