Economic & Community Development eNews
June 2010
Member Perspectives
Jaye Baillie, APR, President and CEO, Ocala/Marion County (FL) Chamber of Commerce
Jaye was among the ACCE members who attended the Entrepreneurship Support Retreat at the Cassopolis, Michigan based Edward Lowe Foundation this April. She explains how the experience is already reshaping the Ocala Chamber’s role in supporting high growth potential start-ups.
Thanks to ACCE’s partnership with the Edward Lowe Foundation a small group of fellow chamber executives and I got the opportunity to immerse ourselves in the philosophy and best practices of economic gardening.
Economic gardening is a proven economic development strategy focused on providing support and services for resident, second stage businesses. Second stage businesses are entrepreneurial ventures that have made it through startup-phase challenges. They typically have 10-99 employees with annual revenue generation ranging from $1 million to $50 million. Economic gardening combines innovative and relevant programming, business intelligence and peer support; helping these growth-focused ‘second stagers’ expand, create jobs, and bring important new investment dollars into the local economy.
The learning environment and experiences at the Edward Lowe Foundation Retreat Center helped us understand the Foundation’s founder Edward Lowe, inventor of kitty litter. Mr. Lowe was known as an ‘entrepreneur’s entrepreneur.’ Through his own experiences, he came to understand that the road to success for new businesses has multiple stages, is fraught with management issues, and that resources, support and appreciation for the entrepreneur are lacking. Lowe believed that entrepreneurs “are the single most important source of energy and innovation powering the free enterprise system; deserve recognition and support for their vital contributions to the economy and to society and learn best from each other.”
The retreat, conducted by Dino Signore and his team, was a game changer for this Chamber and, no doubt, for my colleagues who attended the April session. The Ocala/Marion County Chamber of Commerce is working to position ourselves as our community’s Entrepreneur Support Organization (ESO). We want to create a community that embraces the entrepreneur with specific focus on assisting second stage resident businesses by providing ‘just in time,’ relevant business support.
In a community’s traditional economic development structure, organizations are in place to manage small business development, workforce development, and business attraction. What’s missing is support for the expansion of high growth companies. By providing business intelligence tools, peer group connections and leadership development, the Ocala/Marion County Chamber plans to help second stage entrepreneurs continue their trajectory of success.
For more information visit: http://edwardlowe.org/
Look for your next opportunity to attend an ACCE/Edward Lowe Foundation retreat in spring 2011.
Download the June 2010 Economic & Community Development Division e-Newsletter
