Future Here Now: Rethink Entrepreneurship support

This is a section from a report I finished drafting last week for the U.S. Virgin Islands Economic Development Administration about how to improve their support for entrepreneurs. In the process, I developed a framework for understanding how entrepreneurs and what they need differs as they grow. A lot of times we only look at one small part of this whole continuum, and we fail to provide the support that they actually need. And then we wonder why our entrepreneurship work has so little impact on the communities that we care about.

I will be developing a graphic for this, but that doesn’t come easily to me. I’d love to hear how you would change this or what you think it’s missing.

As a Do Now, consider making a chart with these categories, and listing under them who works with which entrepreneurs / small business owners in your community. Chances are you’ll see some significant gaps.

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Reframe the USVI EDA’s entrepreneurship leadership from providing a handful of programs to fost…