The magic ingredient in ecosystem development
What’s the magic ingredient in ecosystem development? That’s the topic of our newest podcast episode. We’ve been through a lot in the past eleven months – and in many parts of the US and beyond, our communities are devastated. It’s not just the health crisis. More than 100,0000 businesses, and millions of jobs, have disappeared. It may have seemed as if they just “poof!” disappeared, but they will certainly not re-appear as suddenly.
As we look forward to rebuilding our communities in the coming months and years, we’re confronted with an enormous task: renewing, if not rebuilding, entire ecosystems related to small and growing businesses. Those ecosystems can seem amorphous – the borders are fuzzy. Everything seems to have some impact on the whole. That’s the very nature of an ecosystem and it’s what makes it seem so daunting in trying to effect change. The fact is, ecosystems can’t be controlled. They can only be guided.
In this episode of the Agile Strategy Lab podcast, we talk with Andy Stoll, senior program officer at the Kauffman Foundation. Andy talks about what the foundation’s learned about entrepreneurial ecosystems, the critical leverage point for guiding ecosystems (yes, the magic ingredient!), and how he’s seen agile strategy be an effective tool for making the magic happen.
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Liz shepherds the expansion of the Lab’s programming and partnerships with other universities interested in deploying agile strategy tools. A co-author of Strategic Doing: 10 Skills for Agile Leadership, she also focuses on the development and growth of innovation and STEM education ecosystems, new tool development, and teaching Strategic Doing.