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Building an Entrepreneurial Infrastructure: Post-Katrina New Orleans as a Case Study
How we revitalized through entrepreneurship: Talent attraction Business development support Affordable space that inspires entrepreneurial activity Market the city's opportunity Why not capital? Good ideas attract capital. It comes later.
In 2007, I remember the shock I felt when I saw New Orleans on a list of Dead Cities. Shock, then anger. But then again, in 2007, you would only know that the pulse of the city was getting stronger if you lived there. Today, anyone can see that New Orleans' entrepreneurial pulse is stronger than ever.
Named by under30ceo.com as the top city for young entrepreneurs and by Inc.com as the Coolest Startup City in America, New Orleans reputation as a center for entrepreneurial attraction is alive and well. But it wasn't always like this.
In 2006, it was a bleak time for New Orleans. The conversation revolved more around whether the city should be rebuilt, what neighborhoods should be rebuilt, etc. I joined the team at The Idea Village (www.ideavillage.org). The most important characteristic was that we were independent and we were broke. Post-Katrina, we had no funding to tie us to specific programs, specific politics, specific ideologies. We were down to our 2 co-founders. We were full of good ideas and no money. The money eventually found its way to us. I joined the team about a year after Katrina, after which we developed a strategy to rebuild the city's entrepreneurial infrastructure.
It's pretty simple: Talent. Business support. Space. Spread the Word.
Talent: We took advantage of the voluntourism that New Orleans experienced since Hurricane Katrina. Recognizing that many of the voluntourists had professional skills that the city desperately needed, we set up programs to connect entrepreneurs with these professional skills. We started with MBAs from the country's leading schools who accelerated the growth of our high-potential entrepreneurs through implementing marketing strategies, development business plans and financial models for funding, among other critical projects. MBA programs from all over the country are talking entrepreneurship, but it's so difficult to learn in the classroom. Connecting MBAs with struggling businesses will provide real-world experience to MBAs and critical support to businesses. We also utilized talent from leading corporate teams (the Googles, salesforce.coms, etc.) who utilized their product and time to support our entrepreneurs (and us).
Some people came back to New Orleans. Some people moved to New Orleans. Some of this talent would never come back to New Orleans away. But through this process, we built a global network of support that we could draw on, that has brought a continued stream of resources and attention to New Orleans.
Business Support: The Idea Village, since its founding in 2000, has specialized in consulting, networking and tailored support of entrepreneurs. Support includes strategy, marketing, networking, operations analysis and support in any area that is critical to the stability of a business. The Idea Village has a robust network of local service professionals who volunteer services to entrepreneurs in need. It has continued to grow and refine this program that has become an annualized process. Hundreds of entrepreneurs apply each year for fewer than 20 spots in the program. Entrepreneurs need friends, often just a hand to hold. We offered that to our clients.
Space: It's hard to see entrepreneurial activity sometimes without a visual representation of the space. The Idea Village facilitated the development of an entrepreneurial center in the city in the IP, a building in the Central Business District. The building is not home to the more creative-minded companies that the city has become a home to. A walk through the building will convince even skeptics that entrepreneurialism is real. Full of coworking space and collaborative opportunities among like-minded companies, the IP physically represents the story of New Orleans' revitalization. Similar centers in other neighborhoods will also help facilitate more collaboration and coworking activity.
Spread the Word: If you're only talking about how entrepreneurial you are to someone who knows, nothing will happen. Market the city's opportunity outside the story. It's hard when at first, you won't have any rigorous evidence of the city's recovery. But it's funny how entrepreneurialism works. The more you talk about the little ways that people are entrepreneurial, the more the word spreads. In New Orleans right after Katrina, we talked about how a barber opened up shop underneath an abandoned Shell station in New Orleans. Then we talked about the small business owner who drove back and forth from Baton Rouge every morning with fresh groceries for her restaurant. Pretty soon we were talking about the entrepreneur who was changing how America eats through fast food, a company currently opening 2 franchises a week. And about companies receiving seed funding, venture capital, etc. The story took on a life of its own...it was no longer necessary to market the city. The word was being spread.
Building an infrastructure to facilitate entrepreneurship. That's what I believe that we did in New Orleans. It wasn't just The Idea Village. In a lot of ways, it was the whole city, through the support of organizations like Greater New Orleans, Inc., Downtown Development District, LaunchPad, and Social Entrepreneurs of New Orleans.
So, study New Orleans. Observe how the city grew after the devastating events of Katrina. There are a lot of lessons that could serve Detroit.
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