Outline for a workshop/master class on how to help grow your entrepreneurial community. Battle-tested in different formats and different settings and deeply hands-on.

1. Growing YOUR Local Entrepreneurial Ecosystem
Dr. Norris Krueger is a well-known entrepreneurship champion with award-winning education
efforts, widely-cited research and past entrepreneurial experience. Most recently, he has been working to
advance our understanding of how to build healthier entrepreneurial ecosystems and just returned from
the Kauffman Foundation hosted global summit of thought leaders on entrepreneurial ecosystems that he
helped organize. From all this experience, Norris has developed a workshop/master class to get
communities started.
Please join the University of Copenhagen in a hands-on workshop!
This workshop has been delivered in different forms to global audiences, whether practitioner
(World Entrepreneurship Forum), pracademic (International Council for Small Business) or academic
(Academy of Management) and to entrepreneurial communities in place ranging for Cairo to Germany to
Japan. There are even plans to offer a TEDxEntrepreneurship on this very topic, including the top experts
on ecosystem-building.
Ecosystem Workshop Overview
Despite the clamor to grow healthy “entrepreneurial ecosystems,” where is the advice based on
sound theory, successful practice and locally applicable? We offer an intense, hands-on workshop to help
attendees to immediately help and lead such efforts to grow their own local ecosystem with the best
possible tools. This is very much “train the trainer” and very much participatory!
Everywhere we turn, we see calls to grow a healthy “entrepreneurial ecosystem” and isn’t building
a better entrepreneurial community a really good idea? However, as frequently as we hear this, it is rare
that anyone really defines it, let alone tell us how to really do it! We are often called upon to lead such
efforts. Let’s help them. With the best tools!
We offer an intense, hands-on workshop that will give attendees the opportunity to identify things
they can do immediately to help grow their own local ecosystem.
Attendees will get a quick overview of the bleeding edge of what we know about entrepreneurial
ecosystems and how to grow them with insights from academic, development and entrepreneurs. The
best-known and most-useful work on ecosystems is “Startup Communities” by VC and serial entrepreneur
Brad Feld and we base the workshop on his four key principles that all booming entrepreneurial
communities share:
1) Bottom-up/entrepreneur-led,
2) inclusive of all entrepreneur types,
3) rallying points that galvanize the community,
4) commitment to the long term.
So how do WE use these insights to grow local entrepreneurial communities? That is what attendees will
take away from this program. They will take away best practices like SourceLink, a powerful tool for
defragging a fragmented community. They will take away intel that they can use to bring all the key
players in their communities to the table to help grow entrepreneurs. (They will also learn who the “key
players” are, really.) They will take away ways to measure the health of their community and to assess
whether they are making progress. But most of all, they will take away an in-depth, hands-on, intense
experience that identifies strategies and tactics that attendees can use at home immediately!
Most important, participants will leave with a simple tool to jumpstart ecosystem growth in their
own communities.
We look forward to working with a passionate, energetic, committed audience of great
entrepreneurs and to helping them to create their own powerhouse action agenda to take home!

2. Key Takeaways for Participants:
Takeaway #1: Attendees get briefed on the state of the art of our understanding of
entrepreneurial communities and how to build them.
Takeaway #2: Attendees will learn how they can personally help drive their own entrepreneurial
ecosystem bottom up!
Takeaway #3: Attendees will learn what it takes to help align resources in their ecosystem.
Takeaway #4: Attendees will take away proven “rallying” tactics for their communities.
Takeaway #5: Attendees will take away tools to build comprehensive, long-term strategies for
ecosystem development.
Takeaway #6: Attendees will take away a comprehensive set of markers and metrics that any
community can deploy to ensure that the right processes are underway.
Format (simple)
1. Briefing/background on the science / what we know about ecosystems, including
2. WhatTools are available to us such as ecosystem mapping and listening sessions,
3. What Metrics,
4. Best practice strategies (e.g., SourceLink) and tactics leading to first breakout.
5. Attendees will identify personally-relevant, personally-viable mechanisms to implement cutting-
edge ecosystem building strategies and tactics for their community, including
6. Personal “first thing Monday morning” action items for themselves and for their peers and
7. Action items for us!
Detailed Workshop Format (2 -3 hours)
Quick icebreaker: “Are We There Yet? How would you know if your local ecosystem was getting
more entrepreneurial?” (10-15 minutes)
Brief background on the science / what we know about ecosystems, followed by a quick overview
of the tools available to us such as ecosystem mapping, listening sessions, possible metrics, and best
practice strategies (like SourceLink) and tactics leading to first breakout (15):
Breakout Groups Question: If data (like GEM and GEDI) and experience tell us that the two keys
to a more entrepreneurial economy are mindset and ecosystem (or more formally, entrepreneurial human
capital and entrepreneurial social capital)… so what can we do as individuals on each front? (20-30)
The initial round of team ideas are always both energetic and highly plausible. (Inc. will see great
actionable ideas for them too.) Amazing how inclusive the teams always are – without anyone having to
work to get people to talk… or argue ;) but facilitators will ensure that.
[ALSO: At each stage, individuals identify a personal action item from each set of ideas and
commit to its pursuit. Shared publicly via social media, etc.]

3. The teams each present and… you can usually categorize almost all of their ideas and all of their
key themes under one of the four strategic directions proposed by Brad Feld in his recent book, Startup
Communities:
1. Needs to be led bottom-up, led by the entrepreneurial community itself
2. Inclusive – need to support all the participants if possible
3. Rallying points for community
4. Long term perspective
So… we reconstituted the breakout groups into 4 teams (or multiples of 4). We task them to each tackle
one of the “Feld Four”. Demand terrific, actionable results. We always get them. And when each team
shares with the others, the energy jumps again! Great takeaways for Inc. too.
Time permitting, we close with a rapid fire round robin, asking each participant to tell us how
“we” could help them… “we” defined as each other (and for us, how can Inc. & its family help).