Challenging Jumpstart: A New Conversation About Regional Entrepreneurship

Good_bubbles
Good Bubbles

Image © Alice Merkel on Flickr

Marc Canter, CEO of Broadband Mechanics (BBM) is a 25+ year veteran of the software business. Marc was the co-founder of MacroMind, which became Macromedia and helped to develop the world's first multi-media player, the world's first multi-media authoring system, and the world's first cross-platform authoring system while at MacroMind. More about Marc here.

Today technology Guru Marc Cantor posted the article, "Challenging Jumpstart". This interesting article questions the operations of Jumpstart, the Northeast Ohio economic development organization recently cited by The White House as a model for replication across America to advance national innovation and entrepreneurship. Marc points out - and backs up in detail with organizational leadership and awardee email correspondence - that the present Jumpstart organization lacks serious levels of transparency and accountability about how and what percentage of regional and Federal tax dollars (upward of $1B+) are being awarded to fund Northeast Ohio's entrepreneurs. If Jumpstart and other regional organizations tasked to address regional poverty and joblessness via their stewardship of regional assets, innovation and entrepreneurship to generate jobs and prosperity, word out on the street wouldn't be "3 out of 5 folks in Northeast Ohio live in poverty".

Here's an excerpt from Marc's article:

"For several years now, what concerned entrepreneurs throughout Northeast Ohio have been calling for is greater responsiveness and transparency from Jumpstart (Ohio), an organization largely funded by taxpayers. Now, as we see Jumpstart (Ohio) spinning off Jumpstart (America) and moving on to tackle issues of national economic importance (while we continue to face staggering historical unemployment here at home) many entrepreneurs in our community are left scratching their heads."

If organizations adopt habits of transparency and accountability public funding would actually reach down to turbo charge the real powerhouse of Northeast Ohio's regional economic and job creation machine -- our expansive, courageous, brilliant regional network of entrepreneurs.

Learn more about Northeast Ohio entrepreneurs and the widespread innovation already here - invisible because it's under connected and under supported at the levels open innovation requires - in I-Open's Civic Wisdom Libraries on LivestreamVimeo and You Tube.

Read Marc's blog post, comment and participate in this important new conversation with Northeast Ohio entrepreneurs and Jumpstart - and hopefully joined by other regional education, economic and workforce development organizations - to implement better ways of connecting regional assets, resources,  and support services to advance Northeast Ohio's entrepreneurs.

Read Marc's blog post, and if you are so inclined, share this note with your networks. E-mail/ask Marc Cantor (on Facebook and Twitter) what you can do to strengthen transparency and accountability for prosperity building in our Northeast Ohio region, other regions in the nation, and perhaps the world.

Bring the best of the I-Open community's collective Brainpower to this important new conversation. Share your knowledge and expertise by posting to Marc's blog post examples and comments of how you strengthen transparency and accountability.

If every region's economic development organizations adopted the new practices and tools of Open Source Economic Development - openness, transparency and collaboration - entrepreneurs would be connected and regions would be cultures of bubbling-up thriving sustainability.

Civic Wisdom Quote: We each have our own thread to weave

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"I think the best stories show weaving together while never losing sight of the fact that we do each have our own thread to weave."

- Gwen Fischer, Retired Psychology Professor, Hiram College
Fulbright Scholar - University of Zimbabwe, 2001-2002
Rotary University Teaching Award
Hiram, Ohio

I-Open Civic Wisdom Quotes guide leaders in Open Source Economic Development.

Quotes are taken from I-Open research, a library of interviews contributed by leaders in civic, government, academia, and business.

Narratives and images share the story of wisdom in the Civic Space, the area outside the four walls of any organization, helping us to build trust and respect in open economic networks for new conversations and collaborations.

You can learn more about I-Open Interview and Conversation Research at I-Open on Scribd. If you would like to contribute an interview about your work, please send us an email at info@i-open.org 

Images by Alice Merkel on Flickr.

Material is Copyright 2010 Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 and contributed to The Institute for Open Economic Networks (I-Open), a not-for-profit educational economic organization.