5 Jan
2010
Here's an example of using "link and leverage" strategies across a network. In this case we are building an entrepreneurial network within the region by connecting assets within Purdue.
I posted this note to the Economic Gardening Group this morning:
Yesterday, I mentioned how we have used Strategic Doing to link together assets and define replicable, scalable and sustainable initiatives in our region. My colleague, Scott Hutcheson at Purdue came up with the idea of connecting tuition vouchers to a new Entrepreneurship Academy for high school students. Scott also developed the idea of E-BIN (Entrepreneurs Business Information Network). It ties Purdue's business library to our extension system (with offices in every county in Indiana). As you know, one big value added service provided by EG initiatives involves providing access to sophisticated business information, as well as expert guidance on how to use this information. It's a new kind of information infrastructure for an entrepreneurial economy. By leveraging resources at our business library, E-BIN makes these resources available through the extension system.
Another small idea with potentially big results.
To me, it comes down to this: Building an entrepreneurial economy means developing dense networks with strong cores and porous boundaries. We need strong cores of pragmatists to get stuff done and porous boundaries to stay open to new information and learning and enable "boundary spanning".
Entrepreneurs create value from assets they do not own or control. Networks make their task of linking and leveraging these assets easier. Entrepreneurial regions can quickly reconfigure assets through networks. Anna Lee Saxenian figured this out in her book Regional Advantage some years ago.
Until now, though, we really haven't had a discipline in place to enable regions to learn how to develop these networks at scale. That's what Strategic Doing is all about: Building entrepreneurial networks through "link and leverage" strategies. In this way, we hope to take Economic Gardening to scale across Indiana.
From the Purdue Today newsletter:
In a New York Times story on tuition vouchers, Joseph B. Hornett, senior vice president, treasurer and chief operating officer of the Purdue Research Foundation, discusses how Purdue is giving tuition vouchers as prizes for Indiana high school students and how it’s paying off.
For the past four years, the Purdue Research Foundation has awarded vouchers worth $100 to $500 to top-finishing student teams in the summer Entrepreneurship Academy. Of the 21 students given vouchers, 11 have redeemed them and enrolled at the University. This summer, the foundation will start an advanced program — a kind of M.B.A. for high school students — in which top winners will be awarded $1,000 in waivers.
“It’s not an expense at all to the University,” Hornett says.”We did this as a recruiting mechanism to get some of the best and the brightest to come to Purdue.”
The full New York Times article is available here: http://bit.ly/715MD3
Ed Morrison
Economic Policy Advisor
Purdue Center for Regional Development
cell: 216-650-7267
twitter: edmorrison
