Last spring, I posted about the Innovation Center's opportunity to promote entrepreneurship in communities throughout northeast Oklahoma. We submitted the grant proposal on June 30th and received confirmation recently our grant was approved! We are officially funded as a University Center through the Economic Development Administration. So what does this mean? We will be shifting our services to focus on training communities in northeast Oklahoma on the importance of entrepreneurship. This will lead to certifying communities be be entrepreneurial-ready, which will in-turn lead to a corridor of certified entrepreneurial ready communities in northeast Oklahoma. Whew - what a mouthful!
We also have the opportunity to hire someone new, so for the first time in five years, our staff will grow from 3 to 4 (not counting interns and student workers). The new position is a Business Intelligence Research Analyst - and I thought my job title was long. This person will conduct and communicate community and economic research; maintain data on the local, regional, and state economies including business trends and quality of life issues; analyze target industry clusters to promote development and growth of key clusters; and develop and maintain knowledge/data on the local economy through primary and secondary research.
All I can say is, boy am I glad to hire someone to do this! Most importantly, this key person will have a working knowledge and/or formal education in GIS mapping. Which means my days spent on ESRI's Business Analyst software are hopefully about over. If not over, at least I'll have someones brain to pick.
The kick-off to our grant award will be a one-day Economic Gardening conference in Claremore on November 17, 2010. The conference will feature Burt Chojnowsk who is the former president of the Fairfield Entrepreneurs Association and played a major role in attracting $275 million of investment in over sixty start-up companies in a community of less than 10,000. Burt has created innovative, low cost strategies to support an entrepreneurial culture. Burt helped brand Fairfield, Iowa as the entrepreneurial capital of rural America and “Silicorn Valley”. Burt has senior management and capital formation experience with dozens of start-up companies in California and Iowa. Burt serves on the boards of the National Network of Technology, Entrepreneurship and Commercialization (N2TEC), the Community Vitality Center (CVC) and Fairfield First! Burt is also a screener and mentor for World’s Best Technology Showcase. Burt hosts a Rural Entrepreneurial Gathering and an Economic Gardening Boot Camps, annually.
Needless to say, we are all very excited to have this opportunity to expand our services across northeast Oklahoma. We have so many partners involved and I feel we're going about this in the right way. This post only skims the surface of the grant proposal, but without going into boring details, goals and objectives, you get the idea. If you have any questions about the grant or the conference, please let me know.
