Towards Rebuilding Our Local Economies

Startup Commons opens Ecosystem Development Academy eLearning assets globally free.

​Dear friends of Startup Commons,

The world is focused on combating the immediate economic damages of global COVID-19 pandemic. In the context of entrepreneurship and innovation, - local, state, regional and national governments, private and NGO entities, along with many individual people with different profiles, are doing whatever needs to be done to protect their entrepreneurial communities.

Most of current focus is on all the immediate actions needed that can mitigate business damages: direct loans & grants, emergency business advice, network creation, pooling of resources, new channels to bring concerns, ideas and recommendations to government and industry leaders to make entrepreneurs voices heard, etc. And the spirit and action of true collaboration is at all time high.

In our own work with ecosystem developers and builders spread out in five continents, we too have been virtually attending in the enormous effort the best we can.

Ecosystems, as the invisible infrastructures, mostly manually coordinated and often not properly equipped even in normal conditions, with even more limited resources to match the current circumstances, compared to what are expectations, - trying to solve challenges with many interdependencies: flow of talent, pool of supporting providers, resources and information.

All these efforts need to get properly orchestrated so that the ecosystem as a whole is greater than the sum of its parts separately.

Depending on parts of the world and the role in question, so focus on giving immediate and accurate responses to tackle most pressing issues now, - where others are also already moving their strategic efforts to focus on the future. To start planning how ecosystem development efforts can contribute towards reactivate and rebuilding the local economy.

A key question facing us all after COVID19 unprecedented pandemic is; how will ecosystem developers, builders and operators do ecosystem development differently?

At Startup Commons, we believe that rebuilding the economy via innovation, entrepreneurship and ecosystem development needs to make ecosystems more structured, well equipped, more transparent and more efficient.

The use of scarce resources, improving their ability to cope with future disasters like we are living now, and even become a part of a collaborative global solution to rebound the economy in a much healthier form than before.

Startup  Commons, as a business operating globally in the context of innovation and entrepreneurship since 2009, has been consistently recommending wherever we work the importance of implementing two strategies:

• Implementation and development of a sustainable and long term focused ecosystem operator entity, as a neutral operative organisation, to help pool limited resources and coordinate ecosystem functions & connections at different levels, coordinate the ecosystem information flow and keep an inventory of development objectives, their progress and outcomes. Where the ecosystem operator is also a link to other ecosystem operators at other local, state, national and global ecosystems, and is governed by an elected board of key Ecosystem Forum members. Learn more...
• Designing and development of a digital strategy for ecosystem development that makes the ecosystem more interoperable and connected not only among ecosystem actors but also with other sectors and countries, while also brings more efficient methods for data collection, ecosystem analytics, benchmarking and therefore delivering ecosystem intelligence. Learn more...

In essence, those who take care of others, need to be equipped properly to actually do so and taken care of as well.

Cities, regions, states and countries will need to invest significantly to rebuild their economies, now is the time to focus on setting up the foundations towards building the new infrastructures that all ecosystems deserve, to make sure wasting limited resources is avoided. An infrastructure for ecosystem builders to effectively support entrepreneurship and innovation, where these ecosystem infrastructures are a key drivers and stabilisers of economic growth and prosperity.

Without serious investment in physical infrastructures like; roads, bridges, ports, hydro-electric plants, fibre-optic cabling, etc., no country can deliver sustainable economic growth. - The same applies to the digital era, where most importantly, it is the connectivity that counts and where data is the new accumulating and reusable asset to build new and more sustainable economic value and activity. 

It is impossible to imagine a country, sector, industry or area of endeavour that cannot benefit from digital infrastructure, and the services enabled by digital technology are economic growth drivers, job creators, talent magnets and big sources of exports.

For years, Startup Commons has validated these ecosystem building blocks via tens of ecosystem development workshops, consulting and projects with 30+ ecosystems around the world, where we have also transformed all this knowledge into digital eLearning resources as well. - Similar to Growth Academy - but for ecosystem development. 

As it is becoming more necessary than ever to help ecosystem builders, developers and operators understand this new paradigm, - again, appealing to our responsibility and mission to scale innovation entrepreneurship globally via ecosystem development, today we have decided to also make Startup Commons Ecosystem Development Academy globally open for free - with the goal to help educate, empower and inspire the current and future generation of ecosystem builders, developers and operators, along with any individuals and entities who focus on economic development via entrepreneurship, innovation for new job creation and to attract investments.

Ecosystem Development Academy

Once we leave the “panic mode” behind, it is time to focus on “the day after” - to produce a well-planned rebuilding ecosystem strategy that helps achieve a resilient ecosystem. Meanwhile, we have set up a special recovery online taskforce ready to be released wherever required to assist case by case.

Sitting on the same side of the table, together with you and your partners, it is time to reset your ecosystem to new normal. We are all in this together!


Óscar Ramírez,
CEO, Startup Commons