Building Ecosystems and Cross-Sector Collaboration By Jenny Sheets, Director of Startup Programs, Emerging Prairie
recently had the privilege of attending two fantastic summits: first, the Minnesota Young American Leaders Program in Minneapolis; second, the Startup Champions Network Summit in Washington DC. Both were full of ecosystem builders and people doing a job just like mine: building up their startup communities through economic development and quality of life initiatives. The content of the two summits focused on the importance of ecosystem building and crosssector collaboration.
I
What is Ecosystem Building? What is an ecosystem? Well, according to Khan Academy, “Populations and communities are groups of organisms. A population is a group of the same species living in the same area. A community is a group of different species living in the same area. An ecosystem is all of the organisms in an area plus the nonliving (non species) parts of their environment.” Just like a single population of fish can’t survive on its own because it needs food, water, and habitat, an entrepreneur can’t survive solo either.
74
AUGUST 2023
Using the definitions above, when it comes to “startup ecosystems” think of an ecosystem as the founders, employees, customers, government, academics, law firms, CPAs, and all of the entities that help startups thrive. Without a supportive ecosystem, great ideas have nowhere to go. Ecosystem building is intentionally bringing all of the startup elements together in a community. Sure, a founder's ecosystem could be global. Maybe their lawyer is in London, their business advisor is in India, and their customers are in South America. However, that founder is not part of an active, integrated ecosystem. Establishing startup support in a community benefits everyone. Suddenly, a business advisor may be working with a dozen local founders. Then, those founders meet each other and start sharing resources. Those resource providers become champions and make referrals to startups hiring employees, and the list goes on and on. There are people, like myself and other startup cheerleaders in our community, whose jobs are not necessarily to offer business services, but to build the ecosystem. This requires bringing in all the players
required to support startups for the betterment of the greater community. At Emerging Prairie, we put founders and startups in the middle of the circle. When planning all our events and programming, we ask: “Does this support founders and startups?” Depending on the need, we build the ecosystem by inviting in investors, the Small Business Development Center, the Economic Development Corporation, universities, students, legislators, or artists. Ecosystem building is about evolving and adapting to the needs of specific populations as well as the greater community.
What is Cross-Sector Collaboration? Cross-sector collaboration happens when individuals and organizations, across diverse sectors, work together to address challenges and opportunities impacting the community. For example, if community leaders were to address the challenges of homelessness with cross-sector collaboration, they may bring together stakeholders from different backgrounds and expertise to address the issue, such as: nonprofits, corporations, families,