Reframing Project Goals in Alignment with Responsive Ecosystems – Benefits and Challenges

Keywords: Minority Entrepreneurship, Equity, COVID-19
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

The Center for Economic Development at Cleveland State University has been engaged in a 5-year research-practice collaboration funded by the E.M. Ewing Kauffman Foundation exploring the strengths, weaknesses, and gaps in three major entrepreneurial ecosystems across Ohio- Cleveland, Toledo, and Dayton- through interviews with service providers and surveys of entrepreneurs in each region. The Center would supply action grants to each ecosystem throughout the project to address specific issues and develop a set of best practices applicable to ecosystems at different stages.
While many projects faced difficult transitions from in-office to remote work during the COVID-19 lockdown, this project began in January 2021. The heavy reliance on collaboration with service providers was complicated by the ecosystem’s immediate responses to the economic duress of the pandemic and the influx of new entrepreneurs and capital. Similar to how these ecosystems responded, the project team adjusted to these conditions while transitioning PIs in August of 2021. The project philosophy had to be reconstructed from the ground up; the project team spent time during this effective reintroduction to rebuild relationships with the leaders of each ecosystem. During this process, the project team made the difficult yet beneficial decision to partner with Dayton, the most engaged and smallest of the cohort.
Reframing this project transformed it from a broad examination of entrepreneurial ecosystems in legacy cities into an example of how careful, targeted collaboration with a burgeoning support ecosystem could be substantially more interesting and impactful than spreading work across multiple geographies.