APPENDIX
Case Study: Miami and the Center for Black Innovation Background Over the past decade, Miami has emerged as one of the US’s—and the world’s—most exciting and vibrant entrepreneur ecosystems. Yet it wasn’t always that way. In fact, Miami had few resources and support organizations for new and growing business twenty years ago. Thanks to major philanthropic investments, a renewed commitment to revitalizing challenged neighborhoods, and an embrace of Miami’s role as a global gateway, an exciting and innovative ecosystem has emerged. Some recent data points reinforce this story. Miami was recently ranked by INC. magazine as America’s top startup “surge city” and the region has also ranked highly in global ecosystem system assessments led by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor project.44 The latter analysis also found that total entrepreneurial activity rates in Miami were nearly double the US average. This buzz is not limited to the startup or technology communities. Pre-pandemic surveys of local residents showed a thriving entrepreneurial culture, with more than 2/3 of working adults agreeing with the statement that they see lots of opportunities for starting a business and only 25% noting that a fear of failure would deter them from pursuing such opportunities.45 This thriving entrepreneurial culture has been driven and has spawned a whole of host of ecosystembuilding and support organizations. Many observers point to the critical role of LAB Miami as a critical catalyst.46 Founded in 2011, LAB (which stands for Love, Art Business) originally opened as a small (700sf) coworking and collaboration space. LAB’s founders were inspirational, creative and hard-working, hosting hundreds of events and creating buzz around entrepreneurship. In its first few years of operation, the LAB space hosted more than 50,000 people at various events, networking meetings, and the like. 47 This initial spark generated exciting buzz and startup activity, but it also energized other major institutions in South Florida. Perhaps most importantly, the Knight Foundation initiated a major round of grantmaking that, since 2012, has invested more than $55 million to support ecosystem building efforts. Knight Foundation investments seeded the startup and creation of many key ecosystem hubs, including the Center for Black Innovation (formerly Code Fever Miami), LAB Miami, the Miami-Dade College IDEA Center, and many others. These foundation dollars also had massive ripple effects as other major institutions, especially local colleges and universities got into the game as well. South Florida is home to a number of the nation’s leading college-level entrepreneurship program. These include: ◼
Miami-Dade College IDEA Center: The college’s hub for all things entrepreneurial, innovative, and creative. The IDEA Center hosts a variety of programs that help students develop business ideas, turn them into businesses, and scale up those companies once they have started.
44
See Babson College and Emerge Americas, An Ecosystem on the Rise: Entrepreneurship in Miami, 2020; and Gabrielle Bienasz, “Miami’s Tech Startup Scene Gets Hotter,” INC. Magazine, January 29, 2021. Available at: https://www.inc.com/gabrielle-bienasz/miami-next-bay-area-surge-cities.html. 45 Babson College and Emerge Americas, p. 10. 46 Rosabeth Moss Kanter, “Miami’s Tech Future: Entrepreneurial Ecosystems and Leadership Challenges,” Harvard Business School Case Study, April 2018. Available at: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=54439 47 Knight Foundation, Catalyzing Connections: The State of Miami’s Startup Ecosystem, 2015, p. 13. 44
