Entrepreneurship: Moving Ideas to Market
Corbin Angus, Young Entrepreneur and winner in the IGNITE Team’s business plan competition.
PCF’s Moving Ideas to Market initiative, first supported by the C.S. Mott Foundation in fall 2006, is part of a toolkit to diversify and revitalize Mid Michigan’s economy. The initiative creates pipelines of entrepreneurs at the K-12 and postsecondary levels and helps support those who have already taken the entrepreneurial leap. Entrepreneurship is important in Mid Michigan: regionally, small businesses with just 1–99 employees account for 99% of business establishments and 69% of jobs.
Within its activities of 2008 — 2009, the Moving Ideas to Market Initiative focused heavily on the development and implementation of educational and experiential entrepreneurship opportunities for grade school through college – aged students. In addition to aiding in the improvement of entrepreneurial education for the kindergarten through twelfth grades, Moving Ideas to Market focuses on the important role that higher education institutions play in driving entrepreneurship and furthering small business development and success. A spring 2006 study of 160 regional businesses and another study of 500 residents found that Mid Michiganders think it is hard to start, grow, and transform a business, but they consider the region’s higher education institutions their most important assets for doing so.
MI2M empowers three action teams, comprised of 50+ individuals from across the Mid-Michigan region, to collaborate on strategies that improve the entrepreneurship culture in Mid-Michigan. Corporation for a Skilled Workforce (CSW) and Michigan State University Extension 4-H Youth Development are facilitators and implementers on the initiative.
Action Teams
The action groups in Moving Ideas to Market include:
IGNITE: The IGNITE team (IGNITE: Sparking Tomorrow’s Entrepreneurs Today) was launched to develop programs to educate kindergarten through high school students in entrepreneurship.
Please click here for more information on the IGNITE team.
EnGen: EnGen (Empowering the Next ENtrepreneurial GENeration) was launched to enhance entrepreneurship education at the college/university level. Current institutional partners are SVSU, CMU, Kettering, UM — Flint, and MSU.
Please click here for more information on the EnGen team.
Jumpstart: The Jumpstart team was launched to pursue the development of a system and network of support to accelerate the growth of early-stage ideas and businesses through their stages of development.
Please click here for more information on the Jumpstart team.
For more information about Moving Ideas to Market, please contact Holly Hetzner at the Prima Civitas Foundation at h.hetzner@primacivitas.org or 517 999 3382, ext. 306.
Web Portal
The Moving Ideas to Market web portal is one part of the initiative’s toolkit to improve Michigan’s entrepreneurial culture by connecting would-be entrepreneurs with useful resources and information.
The concept for the web portal originated from direct feedback of the entrepreneurs and support organizations in the Initiative.
Resources and information on the web portal are organized according to the focus areas of the three action teams in Moving Ideas to Market – IGNITE (k-12 educators and students); EnGen (collegiate educator and students); and Jumpstart (early and second-stage startups.)
In addition to a catalog of resources, visitors to the portal will find information of each of the three action teams in the Initiative; articles highlighting successful Michigan entrepreneurs; video interviews; new and innovative entrepreneurial programs; and a comprehensive calendar of entrepreneurial events statewide.
