Talking about ecosystems in Nevada

I spent last week talking about ecosystems in Nevada, although I’m not sure we ever used that word.

Taking the Temperature of Nevada’s Business Environment

Rather, we were taking the temperature of the environment for entrepreneurship and small business owners. Environments are akin to ecosystems: the point was to look at whether the conditions are right for new business starts and growth. It was plenty hot on the thermometer, and there was good attendance at three different gatherings we held as well.

The Many Faces of an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem

Often, when we talk about entrepreneurial ecosystems, we’re painting with a very broad brush – the local or regional ecosystem, even statewide. The reality is that entrepreneurs generally don’t encounter the “whole” ecosystem. They tend to encounter the part of the ecosystem that’s at least ostensibly built for them. New small business owners see the parts that have to do with business plans and start-up issues. Maturing ventures might find that the parts that have to do with financing growth or the logistics required in opening more locations are what stick out to them. We all tend to see what we need at the moment – and to see when it isn’t there.

Listening to Nevada’s Diverse Business Communities

In Nevada, we listened to small business owners in the Latino and veteran communities. These two communities expressed quite different needs – no matter what the size of the business. Location matters too – Las Vegas is very different from Reno, which is different from rural parts of the state. The breadth of businesses was also striking: everything from a company producing healthy snacks to a venture that provides high-quality digital presentations for Fortune 50 companies. Supporting small business growth by expanding the ecosystem in Nevada – as the state has committed to do by becoming the nation’s first Right to Start state – will mean finding ways to attend to all these different dimensions and more. Some actions may be the right steps for the new Office of Entrepreneurship; others will call for building or expanding partnerships with organizations that are better positioned.

Fueling Growth with Strategic Conversations

We heard from amazing small business owners on this trip – they provided us with plenty of fodder for case studies on these two communities. While we were at it, we also gave each group a taste of Strategic Doing, focusing on the resources (assets) they’d already found and the new opportunities that might be brought to life by having action-focused conversations among new partners.

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