SSTI’s TBED Community of Practice launches first three subcommunities

SSTI’s TBED Community of Practice efforts to strengthen the capacity of EDA grantees recently entered a new phase with the launch of subcommunities focused on risk capital, lab-to-market, and entrepreneurship development. Each of these offers a chance for informal discussions on important issues facing participants. More than 200 individuals signed up to participate in at least one subcommunity. 

Initial calls covered important topics for the tech-based economic development field:

• The Risk Capital subcommunity meeting included a discussion among venture development organizations and other economic development-related funds, of how they and their portfolio companies were affected by the fallout from the failure of Silicon Valley Bank and how that incident may affect their banking strategies and the advice provided to client companies going forward.
• The Lab-to-Market subcommunity heard from five state and university economic development professionals on the status of the commercialization ecosystems in their regions — Arkansas, Maryland, New Mexico, South Carolina, and Utah — followed by open discussion among attendees.
• The Entrepreneurship Development subcommunity meeting featured a presentation by Columbus, Ohio-based Rev1 Ventures about their model for mentoring entrepreneurs and launching companies. Several attendees shared valuable insights about how their organizations dealt with similar challenges and opportunities.

One-hour calls will be held monthly for each subcommunity, with format and topics driven by participants. Sign up to receive notifications for the meetings that interest you at: https://ssti.org/tbedcop. 

Upcoming subcommunity meetings:

              Risk Capital – Wednesday, May 3, 4 p.m. EDT

              Lab-to-Market – Tuesday, May 9, 2 p.m. EDT

              Entrepreneurship Development – Tuesday, May 16, 2 p.m. EDT

Other opportunities to engage with the TBED Community of Practice include regularly scheduled webinars. In the most recent webinar, the Florida High Tech Corridor shared how it leverages its customer relationship management (CRM) system for web and ecosystem visibility.

TBED practitioners interested in fostering greater collaboration, disseminating best practices, and sharing evidence-based learnings with their colleagues are encouraged to contact tbedcop@ssti.org.

This article was produced by SSTI using Federal funds under award ED22HDQ3070129 from the Economic Development Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce. The statements, findings, conclusions, and recommendations are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Economic Development Administration or the U.S. Department of Commerce.