Starting Point For Ecosystem Development
If something like this does not exist, it should be made as top priority to be created.
Key Actions
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Development Principles
All key information should be made publicly available for all ecosystem actors to see and to contribute if they want and to checked before creating or activating new support functions or ecosystem development initiatives or projects. |
Ecosystem Mapping And Development
It's extremely helpful to maintain a general sense of the types of key actor segments and organizations, their position in the ecosystem and regards to Business Creation and startup development, along with understanding their main function in the ecosystem context. At the same time the ecosystem is in constant change, where entirely new organizations & services emerge and others are ended.
Core purpose of ecosystems is to produce and attract entrepreneurial talent and new ideas in growing volume to build growing businesses. For those new to any ecosystem in any role; talent, business creators, support providers, ecosystem developers or international contacts - simply trying to get some sense and more holistic mental picture about different organizations, available services and services relevancy & availability by reading about websites and directories is extremely challenging and time consuming.
Success of the ecosystem is measured by the volume and quality of great companies growing from the ecosystem, so the growth of local ecosystem is dependent from new people entering, navigating and starting to actively take part in it.
Startup Development Phases Framework And Ecosystem Mapping
Formation - is about inspiring and attracting new talent and providing access to entrepreneurial education, ideas and knowledge to help build the right mindset, understanding and abilities for the journey ahead, typical issues to avoid or solve, what steps to take in what order and about available support along the way.
Validation - is where the support focus shift to initial product development, strengthening core team via mentoring or new team members, supporting team and product validation and customer development.
At Growth - focus becomes mostly about additional resourcing, understanding growth KPI's, creating processes for scaling various business operations, improving financials and help expand business internationally.
Startup Development Phases help understand startup journey, identify key stages and to help develop Startup from "idea to business" and from "founding team to organization". - Learn more about the framework.
- Support ideation to create new potential innovations in technology, business models, processes etc. and to develop these to actual growing businesses and
- To support the team formation and further development for actual effective organization. Below is a chart of some typical services and to what part of startup development those are most relevant, along with some ecosystem level focus areas in context to these services.
Startup Ecosystem Mapping
Startup Ecosystem Development
For defining objectives, to prioritizing them and to ultimately measure their impacts and potential side effects, our ecosystem development framework helps in targeting various activities and measuring the impact of these activities, but also to better understand the relations between different areas.
Ecosystem Development Framework can be used to help communicate and prioritize development suggestions and help develop national and regional ecosystems is balanced manner. It helps in understanding the connections, relations and impacts of various actions and policies, as well as acts as a framework to communicate on what area a specific action is targeted to improve and to be able to understand the context and measure the impact of specific actions.
Ecosystem Development Framework is based on Startup Development Phases model.
The framework helps to capture all the key items categories to be improved, as well as the values types to be measured and improved, in such way that the correlations between items and specifically the side effects can be identified from the index results.
Item categories are (vertical)
- innovation - problems, research, ideas, concept, products etc.
- talent- entrepreneurial people, attitude, skills, passion etc.
- entrepreneurship - mission, vision, culture, values, etc.
- support - knowledge, services, education, workforce etc.
- money - funding/revenue; grants, investments, sales etc.
- growth - growth in “everything”, in volumes, quality and velocity, in companies, in go to market, channels, international networks, jobs, etc.
Values to improve are (horizontal)
- Volume - methods to improve: culture building, communications & marketing, etc.
- Quality - methods to improve: knowledge, guidance & feedback loops, etc.
- Velocity - methods to improve: tools & processes, matching etc.
- ROI (budget/resources vs output) - methods to improve: measuring, analysing, strategy & orchestrating
This framework helps to visualize but also limit the key areas to focus on for each of the objectives being created or to re-evaluating, adjust etc. objects, activities, budgets already in place, in such way that the overall view for what is being improved never gets lost. Ie. each of the objectives should focus on improving some of the items and values from this framework.
Defining And Prioritizing Ecosystem Development
After this, becomes defining the how? - to specify a specific initiative, a project, that can be then budgeted, resources and tracked by owner of this initiative, to make sure it actually happens and also to record the progress and ultimate results.
It’s also good to try identify potential positive and negative side effects that the initiative may have.
What are the key focus areas in the startup development phases framework?
The key focus areas include Formation, Validation, and Growth. Formation focuses on inspiring and attracting talent and providing entrepreneurial education. Validation shifts to initial product development and team strengthening. Growth emphasizes additional resourcing and scaling business operations.
How do services in the ecosystem contribute to startup development?
Services support ideation to create innovations and develop them into businesses. They also aid in team formation and development for effective organization. The balance between public and private service providers tends to shift from earlier to later phases of the startup journey.
Why is startup ecosystem mapping important?
Ecosystem mapping helps identify available services and support needs within the ecosystem. It allows organizations to align services with specific phases of the startup journey and understand their impact on ecosystem development.
What is involved in developing startup ecosystems?
Ecosystem development involves multidimensional activities and processes, coordinated by multiple organizations and stakeholders. It requires understanding connections, measuring impacts, and prioritizing actions to foster balanced ecosystem growth.
How is ecosystem development prioritized?
Priority is given to objectives with the biggest positive impact and least effort to implement. Objectives are defined based on specific improvement areas and measured using a KPI framework. Initiatives are then planned, budgeted, and tracked to ensure progress.
Who benefits from the Startup Ecosystem Development Framework?
The framework benefits ecosystem developers, including policy makers and economic development agencies, in tackling local ecosystem development challenges. It provides guidance on setting objectives, prioritizing actions, and measuring impacts.
Services For Ecosystem Developers
Startup ecosystems breed new businesses and innovation, ecosystems are the R&D departments in our cities. Connectivity within and between the ecosystems, is the single most important contributor to growth.
Good ecosystems needs to be continuously facilitated, orchestrated and developed by ecosystem developers in balanced manner. From short term/bottom up, and from top down/long term perspectives. KPI's for measuring the ROI of business creation processes, business creation support functions and development projects - are the key for successful ecosystem level development. "Only things that can be measured can be improved" |
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