Creating a Vibrant Business Community
According to the Kauffman Foundation, most jobs are created by new businesses. Arizona needs those businesses. And they can’t be developed in a vacuum. Everyone knows Silicon Valley is the mecca for tech company startups, and New York for the media industry. Detroit is the auto industry, and Los Angeles is movies. But what if you live in Arizona? At this year’s conference, we will address some of our community’s needs:
1. Collaboration – the first ingredient is to get the community to work together, pulling in the same direction for the same goals. If well-intentioned efforts spring up all over the place, each claiming its own piece of the territory, sooner or later, those efforts collide and weaken their combined effect. We gather the high growth business community to achieve critical mass.
2. Civics. Once aggregated, it’s time to look up from those laptops and figure out how to make an impact on the local community. We contribute social capital so it will come back. Startups and new businesses often labor in solitude, without support, while Federal programs designed to help small business and administered by cities and counties can’t find the businesses to participate. Aggregating the potential high-growth businesses and pushing them out into the community is essential.
3. Education and Training. Families with children want to live in communities with good schools, and yet public education is facing budget cuts and contraction all over America. If you want to build a workforce, you can’t just consign the job to the schools. You have to model the behavior and make it exciting to the children.
4. Art and Culture. Creative people produce great businesses, as well as great pleasure for the people around them. Creative pursuits are not easy to outsource, and making a place for a creative class is something we encourage.
5. Investment Capital . This comes last. Money follows community and talent. Building the ties between the money and the people who need it is a major objective.
What does this all add up to? Creating a sense of place. When you create such a sense of place, people will want to move there, start their businesses there. and most important, stay there. Be here now!
Where does the money from your ticket go?
It goes to help entrepreneurs who are disadvantaged receive training and resources to continue the tradition of entrepreneurship. The Opportunity Through Entrepreneurship Foundation, a 501 (c)3, was founded in 2005 to help grow the community by growing our entrepreneurial culture. Every penny above our costs goes to fund programs. There is no overhead and no administration in this organization. Visit the OTEF blog to see the results of our previous programs.
Passing the Torch
AZEC10 is the place where entrepreneurs gather to
Connect, Share ideas, and Be Inspired.
We hope to see you there.
Even if you can’t make it, you still have the opportunity to participate by passing the entrepreneurial torch and sponsoring a student. (Simply click REGISTER NOW up above) and select “Sponsor a Student”.
Each student is asked to complete a short essay after the event on their Three Best Take Aways from AZEC10 and share it with their sponsor.
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