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May 20, 2011

City has opportunity to be first Entrepreneur Ready community in state

Joy Hampton Staff Writer

CLAREMORE — It’s always nice to be first, and Claremore is in line to be the first Entrepreneur Ready certified community in the state.

On Monday night, city councilors approved a resolution to endorse and support the Entrepreneur Ready Community Program initiated by the Innovation Center at Rogers State University.

Under the leadership of Dr. Ray Brown, RSU’s vice president of Economic and Community Development, the program will seek to teach communities throughout Rogers County and beyond to “grow your own” entrepreneurs.

This campaign for Economic Gardening is based on statistics that show most jobs in Oklahoma are created by small, local businesses, as compared to large, nonresident firms.

While a lot of time and attention is spent trying to recruit big companies to come in from outside of the state, bringing with them large numbers of jobs, those jobs are less stable in the long-term than smaller, home-grown employment said Jeri Koehler, RSU Business Development Specialist and Lynn Wilson RSU Business Services Coordinator.

Koehler and Wilson work at the Innovation Center where they assist entrepreneurs and business daily through training, counseling and market research. Both have MBA degrees and practical experience running small businesses.

Economic Gardening is an “entrepreneur-centered economic growth strategy,” said Koehler.

There is a difference between a true entrepreneur and a local “mom and pop” business. An entrepreneur will likely produce sales beyond local boundaries. One such example would be Eskimo Joe’s in Stillwater, said Koehler.

By growing the local economy from the inside out, communities can stop leakage of sales tax and other dollars and keep money at home while also increasing the revenue stream by selling products and services outside the trade area.

By making a formal commitment, the Claremore City Council has taken the first step toward becoming a certified Entrepreneur Ready Community and is on track to be the first in the state.

The city will need to designate two or three entrepreneur guides within the community and adopt an “attitude that would support entrepreneurs,” said Koehler.

The next step will be to form a leadership team with 15 to 25 participants and host a one-day kickoff session with the help of RSU.

Following an Entrepreneur Ready Community Assessment, a survey of local entrepreneurs will be used to identify needs. Based on those needs, a local network will be established and local resources identified and cataloged.

The community can then plug into larger resource networks at the regional, state and federal level.

Wilson said the benefits of this process include job creation, retention of local talent and youth, the opportunity to promote the community and its special resources, the attraction of entrepreneur and retention of talent and money that might otherwise leak away to other communities and states.

Resource partners who have agreed to work with RSU on this program include Northeast Technology Centers, Oklahoma Alliance, Northeast Oklahoma A&M at Miami, and the Cherokee Nation. For more information, contact the RSU Innovation center at (918) 343-7533 or email Innovation@rsu.edu.

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