The resources listed below have been recommended by members of the Forward Cities national and local teams. It is not meant to be exhaustive, but as a starting point for national and local audiences interested in advancing inclusive innovation and entrepreneurship. To help navigate through the resources, you can type the beginning letters of the categories, resource name, or the organization in the filter text boxes below. To suggest a resource to add, please fill out this request form.
Categories include
Entrepreneurship Organizations and Initiatives: other key organizations and initiatives supporting inclusive innovation and entrepreneurship
National Data Resources: national sources or general guidance on entrepreneurism data
Ecosystem Mapping: reports and tools describing the components of the enabling environment for supporting entrepreneurs
Racial Equity and Justice: articles and studies about the fight for justice and fair treatment in the United States.
The Future of Equity in Cities
As cities embrace a future permeated by technology, local leaders must continually reassert and revisit community values, while ensuring these values are the foundation of new plans, policies, and programs.
This is particularly true in the areas of infrastructure, public safety and economic development, which are consistently identified as top issues of concern for city officials.
NLC’s latest report, “The Future of Equity in Cities” takes these core issues and forecasts the opportunities and challenges to come in the near-term, and further out in 2030.
The typical journey of an entrepreneur is a long drive on a twisting road. Even the most fortunate founders face challenges around every corner. For people without the experience, networks and financial resources, there are even more barriers to launching a successful company.
A community with a support system can help entrepreneurs navigate the obstacles in the road. A new role – the ecosystem builder – is emerging in communities across the country to help entrepreneurs in a more deliberate way. Ecosystem builders might work in economic development agencies, universities, non-profits, within local governments, but they all recognize how entrepreneurs bring vibrancy to their communities. With new businesses come the new jobs, skilled workers, ideas and innovations that help cities and towns thrive.
But, much like entrepreneurs, ecosystem builders can’t operate in isolation. In this video, learn how convenings like the ESHIP Summit are providing the means for ecosystem builders to share ideas, co-create the tools and replicate success from one community to another.
On Tuesday, July 24 at noon EST, the Welcoming Economies Global Network will host Neil Ruiz and his colleagues from the Pew Research Center to discuss two new research reports they have issued on the use of high-skilled global STEM talent by companies across America. The reports break down by metro area the use of H-1B visas over the last 7 years, as well as the employment of recent international student graduates on their Optional Practical Training (OPT) portion of their student visas. (Did you know the annual number of OPTs has grown 400% over the last 14 years and now eclipses H-1Bs?)
Both of these pathways introduce thousands of talented STEM workers (most with graduate degrees) into economies like Detroit, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and other Midwest metros each year. The webinar is free and will last an hour. You can sign up at https://cc.readytalk.com/r/8ib9nolj6uau&eom.
This article describes an American community survey and a survey of business owners of which the data are merged to assess the experiences of minority- versus white-owned small businesses between 2007 and 2012. This is highlighted due to it being a period encompassing the worst economic downturn since The Great Depression. White firms declined while minority firms grew rapidly. Despite recent efforts to create inclusive entrepreneurial and business ecosystems, however, minority business owners made little progress toward achieving equity or parity with white business owners. Policy prescriptions and implications for future research are discussed.
National Data Resources International Journal of Social Ecology and Sustainable Development Research
The Ever-Growing Gap: Without Change, African-American and Latino Families Won’t Match White Wealth for Centuries
This report examines the growing racial wealth divide for Black and Latino households and the ways that accelerating concentrations of wealth at the top compound and exacerbate this divide. We look at trends in wealth accumulation from 1983 to 2013, as well as projections of what the next thirty years might bring. We also consider the impact public policy has had in contributing to the racial wealth divide and how new policies can close this gap.
The Right to Not Be Poor: The Growing Global Struggle for Economic Human Rights
The United States today is rent with a profound leadership crisis caused by a profound economic crisis. This crisis has revealed the fundamental weakness in our global economic order: although we have the technical means to produce an unheard of abundance, we continue to witness a massive expansion of poverty and deepening economic inequality.
A New and Unsettling Force: Reigniting Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Poor People’s Campaign
As the 45th anniversary of the Poor People’s Campaign approached, the Poverty Initiative and Poverty Scholars from across the US studied this often ignored campaign from the last years of King’s life. A New and Unsettling Force is the result of that collective inquiry, featuring chapters on the history of the Poor People’s Campaign of 1968, the role of religion and the Bible, and the importance of Art and Culture in the struggle to end poverty, along with an interview of Bertha Burris (Queen of the Mule Train) and sixteen essays submitted by those from what we call the modern day Sanitation Workers’ struggles—organizations fighting for the same basic needs and demands for which the Poor People’s Campaign fought. The book is filled with historic and contemporary photographs.
The emergency we now face is economic, and it is a desperate and worsening situation. For the 35 million poor people in America – not even to mention, just yet, the poor in the other nations – there is a kind of strangulation in the air. In our society it is murder, psychologically, to deprive a man of a job or an income. You are in substance saying to that man that he has no right to exist. You are in a real way depriving him of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, denying in his case the very creed of his society. Now, millions of people are being strangled that way. The problem is international in scope. And it is getting worse, as the gap between the poor and the ‘affluent society’ increases…The dispossessed of this nation — the poor, both white and Negro — live in a cruelly unjust society. They must organize a revolution against the injustice, not against the lives of the persons who are their fellow citizens, but against the structures through which the society is refusing to take means which have been called for, and which are at hand, to lift the load of poverty. There are millions of poor people in this country who have very little, or even nothing, to lose. If they can be helped to take action together, they will do so with a freedom and a power that will be a new and unsettling force in our complacent national life…” (Martin Luther King Jr., Massey Lectures, November-December, 1967)
Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival
The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival is uniting tens of thousands of people across the country to challenge the evils of systemic racism, poverty, the war economy, ecological devastation and the nation’s distorted morality.
Equitable Growth Profile of the Piedmont Triad Region
The Piedmont Triad region in North Carolina—covering 12 counties and home to the cities of Greensboro, Winston-Salem, and High Point—is a growing region whose demographics are rapidly changing. Communities of color are driving growth, and have increased from 20 to 33 percent of the population since 1980. Ensuring its diverse residents can participate in the regional economy and contribute to stronger job growth and broadly shared prosperity is critical for the region’s future. Growing good jobs, investing in its workforce, and infusing economic inclusion into economic development and growth strategies are promising strategies.
New report says Greensboro could do better awarding contracts to minorities, women
The city needs to do a better job awarding contracts to minorities and women, according to a study on the Minority and Women’s Business Enterprise program. On Tuesday, the City Council heard the results of a study on the program, which helps minority-owned businesses win city contracts. The study found that minority and women-owned businesses are more likely to be denied bank loans than businesses owned by white men. It also showed that, in general, being a minority contractor has “an adverse impact on securing public contracting and subcontracting opportunities relative to non-MWBEs. What’s more, the bulk of the city’s MWBE contracts go to white women.
Report: The Road to Zero Wealth-How the Racial Wealth Divide is Hollowing Out America’s Middle Class
In this report, we look at the racial wealth divide at the median over the next four and eight years, as well as to 2043, when the country’s population is predicted to become majority non-white. We also look to wealth rather than income to reconsider what it means to be middle class. In finding an ever-accelerating gap, we consider what it means for the American middle class and we explore what policy interventions could reverse the trends we see today. We find that without a serious change in course, the country is heading towards a racial and economic apartheid state.
What We Get Wrong About Closing the Racial Wealth Gap
The racial wealth gap is large and shows no signs of closing. Recent data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (2014) shows that black households hold less than seven cents on the dollar compared to white households.1 The white household living near the poverty line typically has about $18,000 in wealth, while black households in similar economic straits typically have a median wealth near zero. This means, in turn, that many black families have a negative net worth. (Hamilton et al. 2015).
Minority and Women-Owned Business Enterprises (MWBE) Program
In July 2016, Guilford County Schools released the results of a two-year, district-wide disparity study. The district in 2014 commissioned MGT of America to conduct a comprehensive disparity study to evaluate how well the district’s current policies promoted equal opportunity in awarding contracts or if a disparity existed in choosing Minority or Women-owned Business Enterprises (MWBE).
Although the U.S. strives to award people based on their merit, some groups face systemic obstacles to achieving the American dream. The term “inequality” refers to disadvantages whole groups of people face because of their age, ethnicity, gender or socioeconomic status. These disadvantages can help determine whether someone can access education, well-paying jobs or quality healthcare. Moreover, inequalities are often interrelated. For instance, social inequality forces many minority groups into subpar schools, leading to long-term income loss that makes them less able to afford healthcare.
Racial Equity and Justice Affordable Colleges Online Resource
Young and Restless in a Knowledge Economy
The U.S. is on the verge of a seismic shift in labor markets, and fault lines will emerge to threaten a city’s economic future unless it succeeds in attracting the young, college-educated workers who propel today’s knowledge-based economy.
What the IT Revolution Means for Regional Economic Development
Information technology (IT) saturated American business in the 1990s, and countless new companies sprang up around Internet applications. In response, economic development officials across the country have tried to catch the “tech” wave by stimulating the growth of high technology companies and “clusters.”
More than just a pleasant amenity, the walkability of cities translates directly into increases in home values. Homes located in more walkable neighborhoods—those with a mix of common daily shopping and social destinations within a short distance—command a price premium over otherwise similar homes in less walkable areas. Houses with the above-average levels of walkability command a premium of about $4,000 to $34,000 over houses with just average levels of walkability in the typical metropolitan areas studied.
The future of cities depends on better schools. Emerging from this reality is a new movement now coming into clear view. The movement supports public education but rejects the incremental improvement strategy of the past thirty years as insufficient. Its leaders insist that our cities cannot get the schools we need for the 21st century by only concentrating on changing the ones we have. This movement makes an insistent case for civic leaders to push
for an open sector, for new “organizational space,” so that new schools emerge to provide choices and an open door to innovation. Testimony from those in the vanguard suggests it’s possible to do more than create a few new exceptional schools; they say this is the opportunity to reshape the “industry” of schooling, to make teaching a true profession, to change the odds for kids not likely to succeed today.
Entrepreneurship Organizations & Initiatives CEO's for Cities Research
Strengthening Portal Neighborhoods
Cities in the United States are shaped by the immigrants who have historically settled in them. New York City would not be the same without Chinatown, Miami is known for its Cuban flair and Chicago competes with Warsaw for the largest Polish population in the world (Polish News, 2006). Immigration continues to be a defining force for the United States, demographically, socially and economically.
Seizing City Assets: Ten Steps to Urban Land Reform
One of a city’s greatest assets is its available land for development. Unfortunately, many cities have land and properties that are vacant, abandoned, or under-used, with few policies and regulations in place to convert them into revenue-generating, valuable sites. This brief outlines the ten recommended action steps that state and local governments might follow to facilitate the development of urban land and buildings. Compiling an inventory of vacant parcels, planning for the assembly and reuse of land, and working to eliminate the many legal and administrative barriers to acquisition and development are just some of the actions the authors contend should be undertaken in order to create a more transparent, efficient, and effective system for private market land development. The brief will discuss these and other proposed steps, and will highlight examples of successful practices implemented in states and localities throughout the U.S.
On September 16, 2010, CEOs for Cities, the City of San Jose and 1stACT Silicon Valley convened the San Jose Brain Trust, across-sector group of 40-50 urban leaders who engaged in a robust discussion about the role of art and design in creating the next generation of great American cities. The Brain Trust included local leaders as well as artists, designers and curators visiting San Jose for the 01SJ Biennial.
Entrepreneurship Organizations & Initiatives CEO's for Cities Research
SA2020 San Antonio Talent Divident
At a time when cities and metro regions have become the economic engines of the nation and when the most valuable currency of the new economy is knowledge and ideas, cities must be constantly learning, sharing and reinventing. No city lacks talent and ideas, but almost every city lacks a vehicle for connecting with talent and ideas outside their own city and for mobilizing, accelerating, and sustaining action on important goals.
At a time when cities and metro regions have become the economic engines of the nation and when the most valuable currency of the new economy is knowledge and ideas, cities must be constantly learning, sharing, and reinventing. No city lacks talent and ideas, but almost every city lacks a vehicle for connecting with talent and ideas outside their own city and for mobilizing, accelerating, and sustaining action on important goals.
At a time when cities and metro regions have become the economic engines of the nation and when the most valuable currency of the new economy is knowledge and ideas, cities must be constantly learning, sharing, and reinventing. No city lacks talent and ideas, but almost every city lacks a vehicle for connecting with talent and ideas outside their own city and for mobilizing, accelerating, and sustaining action on important goals.
At a time when cities and metro regions have become the economic engines of the nation and when the most valuable currency of the new economy is knowledge and ideas, cities must be constantly learning, sharing, and reinventing. No city lacks talent and ideas, but almost every city lacks a vehicle for connecting with talent and ideas outside their own city and for mobilizing, accelerating, and sustaining action on important goals.
At a time when cities and metro regions have become the economic engines of the nation and when the most valuable currency of the new economy is knowledge and ideas, cities must be constantly learning, sharing, and reinventing. No city lacks talent and ideas, but almost every city lacks a vehicle for connecting with talent and ideas outside their own city and for mobilizing, accelerating, and sustaining action on important goals.
Cities innovate when people mix and mingle, sharing and combining ideas from different vantage points and traditions. That mixing takes place on and in shared infrastructures and spaces that bring people together.
Portland, OR, has acquired a reputation as the nation’s greenest city. For many, this green streak is viewed as a sort of environmental hair-shirt. Portlanders deprive themselves of prosperity in the name of saving the environment. Skeptics view biking, transit, density and urban growth boundaries as a kind of virtuous self-denial, well meaning, but silly and uneconomic. Critics see the seeds of economic ruin. They claim planning, policies and regulations that restrict use or access to resources impede growth and lower household income.
How poverty is distributed across a city matters. A family earning $20,000 per year that moves from a high poverty neighborhood to a mixed-income one recaptures $4600 in disposable income. Local governments are best equipped to do that.
Imagine a community where all citizens have the opportunity to develop all of their talents and put all of their talents to work. Where everyone is the CEO of his or her own career and the community communicates the value of learning every day in every way. Where one’s “portfolio of work” is made up of multiple sources, some paid, some unpaid, that evolves and adapts throughout life to changing circumstances. What would this mean to the ability for all people to climb the economic ladder?
On March 23, 2011, CEOs for Cities, the City of Oklahoma City and the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber convened the Oklahoma City Brain Trust, a cross-sector group of 25-30 urban leaders who engaged in a robust discussion of the trends shaping the future of cities, how Oklahoma City is likely to fare in light of these trends and if the local civic agenda needs to shift in response to these trends.
Entrepreneurship Organizations & Initiatives CEO's for Cities Research
New York’s Green Dividend
It’s no secret that New York City’s high density, extensive transit and excellent walkability are fundamental contributors to the lifestyle enjoyed by its citizens. However, as this study shows, these factors are also major contributors to their economic well-being. Because New Yorkers drive substantially less than the average American, they realize a staggering $19 billion in savings each year — money that their counterparts in other metro areas spend on auto-related expenses. And because they spend so much less on cars and gasoline—money that quickly leaves the local economy—New Yorkers have much more purchasing power to spend locally, stimulating the city’s economy. This is New York City’s Green Dividend.
New Metropolitan Alliances Regional Collaboration for Economic Development
In this report, we provide an initial scan of development-focused regional alliances. We begin with a brief assessment of the growing interdependence of cities and their surrounding suburbs, highlight some of the political, constitutional and economic barriers that make regional collaboration difficult and conclude with a summary of the lessons to be learned from present experiences in city-suburban alliances. The report is based on an analysis of over one hundred traditional and emerging regional collaborations in the thirty largest metropolitan areas in the country and five in-depth cases that more clearly identify the challenges to regional alliance building, the strategies employed to meet these challenges, and the outcomes to such strategic action.
The New Markets Tax Credit program (NMTC) was passed by Congress in December 2000, as part of the Community Renewal Tax Relief Act. The program is designed to stimulate investments in commercial real estate and business ventures located in low-income urban and rural areas. Over a seven-year period (2001-2007), $15 billion of investment capital will be eligible for tax credits. The NMTC program provides investors with tax credits that total 39 percent of their investment, distributed over a seven-year period.
On February 3, 2011, CEOs for Cities and Florida International University convened the Miami Brain Trust, a cross-sector group of 50-60 urban leaders who engaged in a robust discussion of the trends shaping the future of cities, how Miami is likely to fare in light of these trends and if the local civic agenda needs to shift in response to these trends.
Entrepreneurship Organizations & Initiatives CEO's for Cities Research
Measuring Urban Transportation Performance
While peak hour travel is a perennial headache for many Americans — peak hour travel times average 200 hours a year in large metropolitan areas — some cities have managed to achieve shorter travel times and actually reduce the peak hour travel times. The key is that some metropolitan areas have land use patterns and transportation systems that enable their residents to take shorter trips and minimize the burden of peak hour travel.
Entrepreneurship Organizations & Initiatives CEO's for Cities Research
Livability Challenge Report
Beauty is a challenge. When it comes to our cities, we rarely speak of beauty. Our urban aspirations tend to be framed in more quotidian language – efficiency, safety, function, economy. But beauty silently drives our decisions. Where will we go for lunch? Is there time to stop at the park? Have you seen that performance? Where should we live? And in driving those decisions it enriches our lives.
Leveraging Colleges and Universities for Urban Economic Revitalization
Colleges and universities have long been important to urban and regional economic growth. They have also been one of the most valuable assets for urban communities in advancing educational, health, and social service needs of urban residents. However, urban academic institutions are equally well positioned to spur economic revitalization of our inner cities, in great part because they are sizable businesses anchored in their current locations.
It has become abundantly clear that partnerships and creativity are necessary to leverage existing resources to stimulate vibrant cities. All that is required to make cities great does not rest in one place. Government, at any level, does not possess the dollars, thinking and capital needed to navigate the complexity of today’s cities. However, most U.S. cities have extensive civic, cultural and intellectual assets – assets often embodied in what we know as anchor institutions – that can be put to work on behalf of cities.
For the first time in 50 years, central cities across America are attracting talented young people. But what happens when they begin to have children? Unfortunately, as many as half of them leave for the suburbs once their children reach school age.
How Business and Civic Leaders can make a big difference in Public Education
Everybody who lives or works in a big city has a stake in the performance of the local public school system. Businesses and cultural institutions suffer when thousands of young school graduates are unprepared to do productive work or take a full part in civic life.
More than ever, cities and metro regions are the economic engines of the nation, and the most valuable currency in the new economy is knowledge and ideas. To keep up, cities must learn, share, and reinvent themselves constantly. No city lacks talent, but almost every city lacks a vehicle for regularly connecting with talent and ideas outside their own city and for mobilizing, accelerating, and sustaining action on important goals.
The definition of the Creative City is elusive. It seems irretrievably intertwined with starchitect-designed temples to art; arts districts that make cities more lively and raise real estate values; tourist-friendly art and arts events; attempts to harness the economic impact of the arts and build international civic reputations; attracting and retaining a so-called “creative class”; using art to showcase diversity and build understanding among people; building an economy of creative industries; recognizing creativity as a precursor for innovation; even adopting a creative approach to civic problem-solving.
One of the most striking characteristics of U.S. cities is residential segregation. Historically, researchers and policymakers have focused on segregation by race, especially the segregation of African Americans into troubled black ghettos in central cities. Segregation of blacks from whites in most U.S. metropolitan areas rose steadily from the turn of the century until about 1970. While racial segregation is still high by historical and international standards, there has been a slow and steady decline in segregation by race since 1970, driven by the Fair Housing Act of 1968 and steady progress in race relations.
Racial Equity and Justice CEO's for Cities Research
Driven Apart
The secret to reducing the amount of time Americans spend in peak hour traffic has more to do with how we build our cities than how we build our roads.
Seventy years ago GM’s Futurama generated a compelling vision for a new American ideal: a spacious, car-centered good life. That ideal dominated public policy for 50 years, literally paving the way for Americans to spread out by increasing homebuyers’ access to credit and supporting development patterns that relied on cheap land and cheap gas. As a result, core cities throughout the U.S. appeared destined for permanent decay and decline.
Imagine a community taking up the challenge to ensure its citizens are able to meet their daily needs without owning a car. Where every convenience is within a short walk, bike ride, car-share or transit trip. Now imagine we could realize that future here and now. What would that look like? What would be an effective quick start strategy? Where are the early wins to create momentum? And how would a community know when it is succeeding?
Today, it is time for our nation to declare: The Era of Urban Decline is over. America’s cities are coming back.
Unprecedented access to capital, booming retail opportunities, and astonishing reductions in crime, all point to an upward trend in cities. While there is still much to be done, cities are by and large doing better at the beginning of the 21st century, after decades of decline. In most major cities, unemployment, crime, and the welfare rolls are down, while jobs, income, and fiscal health are up. New immigration and renewed interest in city living by young and old alike have added millions of new residents to America’s cities, helping to fuel economic growth in their regions.
Imagine a city where every citizen entered into a robust public life as equal, enjoying public amenities of choice, engaging actively in the decisions affecting their community, shaping their community with their citizenship and volunteer commitments, and sharing public space joyfully with others. What is our vision for robust public life and what can we do now to realize it? Further, how can citizens’ attachment to their community be solidified by their ability to engage in a robust public life?
Entrepreneurship Organizations & Initiatives CEO's for Cities Research
City Vitals 1.0
A detailed set of statistical measures for urban leaders to understand their city’s performance in four key areas: talent, innovation, connections and distinctiveness, in comparison to the 50 largest metropolitan areas in the United States.
CEOs for Cities is a learning community and partnership network that connects cross-sector, cross-generational civic CEOs and urban leaders to each other and to smart research, ideas, practices, case studies, lessons learned, and compelling stories for making cities more economically successful.
Traditionally, the analysis of city economies has focused on their distinctive advantages in producing goods and services. But increasingly, the economic advantages of cities are driven by the range of choices they offer to consumers. Production and consumption are intertwined, of course; everyone who is a producer is also a consumer. And just as many producers are becoming more mobile and global, much consumptions is becoming more intensely local. And as people choose places to live based on local opportunities for consumption, they are, in turn, influencing which places have the human capital needed to be successful in production.
Urban economies offer tremendous opportunities as vehicles for regional and national economic growth. The assets of cities are enormous, caries , concentrated in particularly critical sectors, and integral to regional economies, which account for the overwhelming portion of our national economy.
Chicago has placed an increasing emphasis on pursuing green policies in recent years. Because city residents use less land and travel less, their environmental footprint is smaller than for those who live in less dense locales (Glaeser 2007). Even so, there are still some skeptics who view transit, density and conservation as a kind of virtuous self-denial, well-meaning, but silly and uneconomic. Critics see the seeds of economic ruin: planning, policies and regulations that restrict use or access to resources impede growth and lower household income.
Entrepreneurship Organizations & Initiatives CEO's for Cities Research
The Changing Dynamics of Urban America
CEOs for Cities, a national leadership organization whose mission is to advance the economic competitiveness of cities, conceived this project to examine the changing drivers of urban economic success. The organization’s members discussed the project design at the onset, and then reviewed the full results at the national meeting in the fall of 2003. This document provides highlights of the findings. The final report, presenting the full results and reflecting observations from the meeting, is available upon request. We are very grateful to CEOs for Cities, its members and staff, for their active support, participation and guidance throughout the project.
Two-thirds of college-educated 25 to 34 year-olds report that they will make the decision of where they live first, then look for a job within that area.
On April 12, 2011, CEOs for Cities, the City of Atlanta, McKenna Long and Aldridge, and Parkmobile convened the Atlanta Brain Trust, a cross-sector group of 75 urban leaders who engaged in a robust discussion of the trends shaping the future of cities, how Atlanta is likely to fare in light of these trends and if the local civic agenda needs to shift in response to these trends.
The Role of the Cleveland Local Innovation Council
This document was developed in 2013 by Forward Cities to describe the role of the Cleveland Innovation Council, before the initiative formally started. Separate descriptions were created and tailored to each of the other participating cities (Detroit, Durham, New Orleans), but the responsibilities and roles of the council members were the same across all four cities.
Entrepreneurship Organizations & Initiatives Forward Cities Research
101 Wacky Ideas
Educational attainment is the biggest predictor of success for cities and metro areas today. The research is unassailable. The more educated a city’s population, the more robust its economy will be. In fact, educational attainment explains 58 percent of any city’s success, as measured by per capita income.
This report takes a close look at key differences in social entrepreneurial activity between pre- and post-Katrina New Orleans, and identifies factors and agents that enabled a shift in the metro’s entrepreneurial landscape.
Since 2000, the number of college-educated 25 to 34 year-olds has increased twice as fast in the close-in neighborhoods of the nation’s large cities as in the remainder of these metropolitan areas.
The Forward Cities Cleveland Experience: Overview and Analysis
This report from January 2016 describes the characteristics and plans for the four focus areas selected by Cleveland’s Innovation Council. It also discusses the role of the public sector in inclusive innovation and programs that focus on the talent pipeline and youth entrepreneurship.
One of the most pressing challenges our nation faces is preparing a college-educated workforce. By 2018, more than 60 percent of jobs will require some form of college education, but today only 40 percent of Americans earn an associated degree or bachelor’s degree by age 27.
The Big Impact of Small Businesses on Urban Job Creation: Evidence from Five Cities
Every city is armed with an arsenal of strategies to attract and retain large businesses, but city leaders will need to adopt new tools and develop a comprehensive small business plan to effectively support the growth of small businesses. Small business support in most cities is an uncoordinated, unfocused set of programs implemented by a disparate group of private and public organizations. In this report we outline a playbook with five critical strategies city leaders should implement to maximize the job creation of small businesses in their cities.
Takeaways from Living Cities’ Anchor Institutions Design Lab
Drawing on a cross-sector convening of 60 leaders, this 2012 blog summarizes lessons on how we can better harness the economic impact of anchor institutions to drive growth and opportunity
The Survey of Business Owners provides the only comprehensive, regularly collected source of information on selected economic and demographic characteristics for businesses and business owners by gender, ethnicity, race, and veteran status. Data are published for metropolitan areas, states, and the nation.
Fifty years ago, it would have been quite easy to figure out the most powerful employer in a city – a carmaker, perhaps, or a steel mill. Or the corporate headquarters of a giant bank or insurer…Those trends have led city leaders and others to pay greater attention to the institutions that in many places now wield the greatest influence…
With this report, Stanford Latino Entrepreneurship Initiative (SLEI) provides the first annual State of Latino Entrepreneurship report. It provides academic researchers, policy makers and business leaders with a timely update of SLEI’s research results. The report finds that even as the Latino population (currently at 17%) is growing at an undeniably fast rate (estimated to be 30% by 2060), and with it, an explosion in the number of Latino Owned Businesses (LOBs), there is a multi trillion dollar opportunity gap between Latino Owned Businesses and Non-Latino Owned Businesses (NLOBs), driven by the dramatic difference in size between the two.
National Data Resources Stanford Latino Entrepreneurship Initiative Resource
Small Business Technology Transfer Program
The Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) is another program that expands funding opportunities in the federal innovation research and development (R&D) arena. Central to the program is expansion of the public/private sector partnership to include the joint venture opportunities for small businesses and nonprofit research institutions. The unique feature of the STTR program is the requirement for the small business to formally collaborate with a research institution in Phase I and Phase II. STTR’s most important role is to bridge the gap between performance of basic science and commercialization of resulting innovations.
The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program is a highly competitive program that encourages domestic small businesses to engage in Federal Research/Research and Development (R/R&D) that has the potential for commercialization. Through a competitive awards-based program, SBIR enables small businesses to explore their technological potential and provides the incentive to profit from its commercialization. By including qualified small businesses in the nation’s R&D arena, high-tech innovation is stimulated and the United States gains entrepreneurial spirit as it meets its specific research and development needs.
Change is never easy. Lasting change at a city level is nearly impossible without the combined passions of very different kinds of people. University chancellors and outsider artists. Corporate executives and cultural entrepreneurs. Twenty-somethings and sixty-somethings. That’s the idea behind CEOs for Cities’ City Clusters: None of us is as smart as all of us, and no one sector, discipline, or generation can create sustainable change alone.
Entrepreneurship Organizations & Initiatives CEO's for Cities Research
Small Business Credit Survey
The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta administers a twice-yearly survey to businesses with fewer than 500 employees to gather information on trends in credit access and other issues relevant to small business. It covers much of the eastern United States
Small Business and Entrepreneurial Support Programs Offering Services in North End/New Center
This document lists organizations within the City of Detroit with entrepreneurial support services available to individuals or businesses in the North End/New Center District as of December 2015.
Forward Cities Research Products Data Driven Detroit Research
The Connected City
In June 2014, CEOs for Cities convened the Connected City Workshop for our rapidly growing cross-sector City Cluster network. A City Cluster is a group of cross-sector leaders from a city who join CEOs for Cities as team. We welcomed more than 200 cross-sector leaders from more than 20 cities throughout the country to explore innovative cross-sector strategies for connecting a city’s most distinctive assets.
Entrepreneurship Organizations & Initiatives CEO's for Cities Research
Revitalizing the Corridor
Prepared by MCR in partnership with ProsperUS Detroit, this executive summary focuses on the five ProsperUS Detroit Target Areas. It provides information to place-based organization about how to attract, grow, and retain businesses in their community, as well as provide critical information to the ProsperUS entrepreneurs so that they may strategically site their businesses.
There is no shortage of theories about the secret sauce for city success. Some experts argue that geography matters more than ever and success depends on physical capital and authentic placemaking. Others submit that in a knowledge economy, cities must build human capital and creative talent. Some insist that social capital and economic opportunity ultimately define the soul of a city. Still others predict that the future city is about smart digital capital and harnessing the power of technology.
EDA’s Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (OIE) leads the Regional Innovation Strategies Program competition to spur innovation capacity-building activities in regions across the nation. The program is authorized through the America COMPETES reauthorization Act of 2010, and received a dedicated appropriation for the first time in FY 2014.
At a time when cities and metro regions have become the economic engines of the nation and when the most valuable currency of the new economy is knowledge and ideas, cities must be constantly learning, sharing, and reinventing. No city lacks talent and ideas, but almost every city lacks a vehicle for regularly connecting with talent and ideas outside their own city and a cross-sector vehicle and framework for mobilizing, accelerating, and sustaining action on important goals in their city.
The City of Pittsburgh has launched the “Pittsburgh Roadmap for Inclusive Innovation,” a strategic plan that will support equitable access to technology, City resources, and information. Championed by Mayor William Peduto’s Department of Innovation and Performance and the Urban Redevelopment Authority of Pittsburgh, the Roadmap for Inclusive Innovation is a strategic plan aimed to improve the quality of life for all residents. The Roadmap encompasses more than 100 projects and initiatives the City of Pittsburgh will undertake in the coming months and years.
Overview of Current Data Work for the Durham Innovation Council
This July 2015 presentation displays maps of minority and disadvantaged businesses in the Angier-Driver focus area, as well as Durham and North Carolina as a whole. It also includes preliminary results from interviews of neighborhood entrepreneurs and small businesses.
National Data Resources John Killeen, City of Durham Neighborhood Compass Research
City Success: Theories of Urban Prosperity
City leaders face a wide range of choices about what to do to improve their economies. They often find themselves buffeted by the latest economic development fad and are pushed to adopt so-called best practices to keep up with their competitors. The objective of this report is to sort through all of the different theories that underlie alternative approaches to economic development and give policymakers a firm footing for deciding what to do.
Mayors and other civic leaders have grown to understand that improving their city’s educational attainment, reducing vehicle miles traveled and reducing poverty are important to regional success and economic prosperity. And while these strategies contribute to the general good, the payback from investments in these areas often seems distant and uncertain. However, a close examination of actual urban performance across the nation reveals that stronger metro areas reap real, tangible and calculable economic benefits.
This handout is from the session on “Lessons and Reflections on 2 Years of Forward Cities” at the Forward Cities Cleveland convening, and describes Detroit’s Neighborhood Business Initiative.
Mission Throttle provides a wide range of advisory services tailored to achieve operating excellence and sustainable social impact. We work closely with our clients to identify a mix of services that reflects their unique needs. Services include: Assess financial, operational and programmatic performance and capacity, Conduct goalsetting/visioning workshops, Prepare concept business plan, Develop innovative fundraising strategies
Minority Business Ownership: Data from the 2012 Survey of Business Owners
Nationwide, 29% of businesses are majority-owned by minorities, and this share is quickly increasing. The recently released 2012 Survey of Business Owners (SBO) provides a unique opportunity to examine how specific minority groups are performing in the economy as a whole, the disparities they face in sales and employment, and the business characteristics that distinguish them.
Cities have always been brands in the truest sense of the word.
As international place branding authority Simon Anholt writes, “Unless you’ve lived in a particular city or have a good reason to know a lot about it, the chances are that you think about it in terms of a handful of qualities or attributes, a promise, some kind of story. That simple brand narrative can have a major impact on your decision to visit the city, to buy its products or services, to do business there, or even to relocate there.
Minority and Women Entrepreneurs: Building Capital, Networks, and Skills
New and small business owners often face particular challenges, including lack of access to capital, insufficient business networks for peer support, investment, and business opportunities, and the absence of the full range of essential skills necessary to lead a business to survive and grow. Women and minority entrepreneurs often face even greater obstacles. While business formation is, of course, primarily a matter for the private sector, public policy can and should encourage increased rates of entrepreneurship, and the capital, networks, and skills essential for success, especially among women and minorities. In particular, this discussion paper calls for an expanded State Small Business Credit Initiative and an enlarged and permanent New Markets Tax Credit to encourage private sector investment in new and small businesses.
National Data Resources Brookings Institution Resource
Lessons of Hayti
As told by prominent historians, scholars, former Hayti residents, and a survivor of the Tulsa Riots of 1921, “The Lessons of Hayti ” details a history of Black success in America, including the creation of over 100 independent Black communities, nearly 100 Black Colleges and Universities, and wielding massive political power in the former Confederate States, all within 50 years of the end of slavery. “The Lessons of Hayti” also examines the demise of these historic Black communities over the last 100 years due to both racial violence and political backstabbing triggered by pivotal historic events including the landmark case “Plessy vs. Ferguson” in 1898, the end of of World War 1 in 1918, and the civil rights movement of the 1950’s and 60’s.
This Connected Cleveland case study highlights how public officials collaborated with local institutions and business leaders to physically connect people across downtown Cleveland, OH through the development and enhancement of a new $0 fare trolley network.
Introducing the Entrepreneurship Ecosystem: Four Defining Characteristics
This 2011 Forbes article by Daniel Isenberg outlines the six domains of entrepreneurial ecosystems that support value-creating entrepreneurial ventures.
Much of the “green” movement has mistakenly depended on self-motivation. The messages of the cause reach individuals who then decide whether or not they want to take it upon themselves to “green” their individual lifestyle. Individual catalysts that may come to mind include (1) eating less red meat, (2) recycling your bottles and cans, (3) composting food waste, (4) bicycling to work. These are all fine and good, but these four don’t individually make much of a difference to the planet’s well-being.
Intended Outcomes of the Forward Cities National Learning Collaborative
This excerpt from the January 2014 proposal for the Forward Cities National Learning Collaborative describes the intended short-term and long-term outcomes for the initiative. Specific goals and outcomes may have evolved during the initiative implementation, which began June 2014.
How do incentives and affordable housing requirements impact the economics of housing development projects? The Inclusionary Housing Calculator is designed to allow communities to explore the relationship between various local incentives and the development of mixed-income housing. The calculator is pre-populated with data for sample projects and can be further customized by users to reflect the unique circumstances or scenarios in their community.
This brief by Gregory L. Brown & Randell McShepard makes the case for encouraging immigration, citing benefits of immigrant labor to the Northeast Ohio’s economy and the potential to help reverse population decline. It makes recommendations for Cuyahoga County to foster a more welcoming environment for immigration.
Forward Cities received an in-kind consultancy grant from the Global Corporate Citizenship program at IBM that provided donated time to conduct research related to entrepreneurism and small business development in Cleveland. IBM’s full scope of work was to assess the Forward Cities corridors; conduct Interviews to understand the entrepreneurial activity and supports; summarize national best practices for entrepreneurial development; and recommend actions to accelerate entrepreneurial activity and grow small businesses.
This document was provided in January 2015 to the local Forward Cities Innovation Councils to guide them in their planning process. It describes the national project goals, the target population, and next tasks as of January 2015 for the local council and the research teams.
Forward Cities: Mobilizing Local Action for Inclusive Entrepreneurship
This report documents the goals and progress of Forward Cities as of September 2015, summarizes the early outcomes, and suggests implications for the initiative going forward.
Forward Cities: Four Cities’ Efforts toward More Inclusive Entrepreneurship
This February 2017 report documents the activities and outcomes from the two-year Forward Cities pilot, and suggests implications for similar peer-learning initiatives to support minority entrepreneurship.
National and local research partners presented at the December 2015 Durham Forward Cities convening to provide an update on the national brief and highlight local data and analysis examples from Cleveland, Detroit, Durham, and New Orleans.
This presentation at the Cleveland Forward Cities convening describes the local research products and the main findings from the Urban Institute brief reporting on the initiative’s early progress.
These supplemental documents of the North End/New Center District include a data table and maps with boundaries, employment centers, and support organizations.
National Data Resources Data Driven Detroit Research
Forward Cities Detroit North End/New Center District
This December 2015 brief details the selection and landscape of the North End/New Center District in Detroit, MI, the focus neighborhood for the Detroit Innovation Council’s efforts
National Data Resources Data Driven Detroit Research
Expanding Opportunity for Minority-Owned Businesses in New Orleans
This paper, one of the series of the Data Center’s New Orleans Index at Ten, provide empirical data on how minority-owned business enterprises perceive the post-Katrina entrepreneurial ecosystem, including impressions on inclusiveness, supports, and access. It also includes recommendations on policies and procedures that improve the ecosystem’s ability to support MBE development.
Evaluating the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Growth Accelerator Fund Competition Program
The goal of this report is to evaluate the scope and value of the GAFC program as a federal government-sponsored means of spurring innovation and small business growth. The report begins with a background on the accelerator movement in the United States, including a description of the landscape of accelerators and other similar entrepreneurial support organizations. It then investigates other startup support programs within the U.S. government, and provides a cursory examination of selected state- and local-level support efforts and the trend abroad. The report then goes on to examine the results of the survey of GAFC recipients and provides a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis of the program.
This document is an inventory of entrepreneurship support organizations in Durham as of November 2015. It was produced as part of the Forward Cities Learning Initiative by the local research team with the assistance of the local Forward Cities Innovation Council.
National Data Resources John Killeen, City of Durham Neighborhood Compass Research
Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Diagnostic Toolkit
This 2014 publication from the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs provides methodological guidance on assessing the current state of entrepreneurial ecosystems and offers a set of resources and tools that can be used by development practitioners.
The purpose of the Small Business Policy Project is to improve the environment address barriers to the success of small and micro businesses in the District of Columbia.
Creating Inclusive High-Tech Incubators and Accelerators: Strategies to Increase Participation Rates of Women and Minority Entrepreneurs
Many high-tech incubator and accelerator leaders convey that they would like to become more inclusive, but that they are unsure of how to do so effectively. This report hopes to address this situation by providing these leaders with a set of tools and models they can implement to become more diverse and inclusive. The report includes highlights from incubators and accelerators that are struggling with diversity issues as well as from those that have already implemented strategies that have created more inclusive organizations. We discuss the various barriers that prevent women and minority entrepreneurs from participating in high-tech incubators and accelerators and a set of recommended strategies to help eliminate the barriers.
This guide contains examples of storytelling both large and small�from effective Tweets and Facebook posts to blog posts and media coverage from the initiative�intended to expand notions of which stories are worth telling and how they might be shared. The examples here are also reflective of data- and evidence-based work across various stages of implementation.
National Data Resources What Works Cities Resource
City initiatives for technology, innovation and entrepreneurship
CITIE is the product of a partnership between Nesta, Accenture and the Future Cities Catapult under CITIE.Index. It lays out a framework and diagnostic tool for roles that a city can play to support innovation and entrepreneurship.
Center for Enterprise Development Efforts on Entrepreneurship
CFED’s current portfolio of entrepreneurship work focuses on informing, discovering and testing scalable product, program or policy strategies for addressing microbusiness owners� greatest financial challenges.
The Census Business Builder: Small Business Edition allows small business owners a way to easily navigate to and use key demographic and economic data to help guide their research into opening a new or expanding their existing business.
Catalyzing Entrepreneurship Assets, Gaps, and Interventions for Areas Beyond the New Orleans Renaissance
This Forward Cities report explores and recommends specific interventions toward fostering entrepreneurial activity while avoiding gentrification in a selected neighborhood in New Orleans.
BizGrid is interactive online directory and a physical infographic designed to help entrepreneurs navigate the landscape of organizations providing business assistance in Detroit
The Big Ideas for Small Business toolkit discusses important strategies for how local government leaders can be better advocates for small businesses. Our report provides guidance on creating ecosystems that support small business growth; reorganizing city resources to better meet the needs of small businesses; and providing business owners with access to new sources of capital.
The DC Urban Innovation Lab supports a cohort of urban innovators focused on addressing social challenges in the Washington region. The lab connects these innovators with the wealth of policy experts on education, health, economic development and related topics at the Institute. It also connects the growing number of people and organizations working to create an urban innovation ecosystem in the DC area.
The Aspen Institute Center for Urban Innovation identifies, connects, and supports urban innovators, with a special emphasis on people who come from or work in underserved neighborhoods. It also helps leaders from government, business, and philanthropy better understand the needs of urban innovators so that their powerful ideas can spread rapidly from place to place.
A Roadmap for Inner City Business Data Collection (ICIC)
This report includes findings from ICIC’s study of the accuracy of proprietary business data, and a roadmap to help other cities identify business information gaps and collect more comprehensive data.
Demographic: 45.64% of the population is Caucasian. In St. Louis47.90% of the population is African American. In St. Louis 3.06% of the population is Asian.
Demographic: 50.6% were Black or African American, 40.8% White, 5.0% Asian, 0.3% Native American, 0.1% Pacific Islander, 3.6% of some other race and 2.3% of two or more races. 6.3% were Hispanic or Latino (of any race)
Demographic: 44.8% of the population was White (37.0% non-Hispanic white), 40.0% was Black or African American, 0.8% American Indian and Alaska Native, 3.5% Asian, 3.4% from two or more races. 17.3% ofMilwaukee’s population was of Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin
Demographic: White: 72.6% (non-Hispanic: 11.9%), Black or African American: 19.2%, Asian: 1.0%, Native American: 0.3%, Pacific Islander or Native Hawaiian: 0%, Two or more races: 4.2%, Other race: 5.4%, Hispanic or Latino of any race: 70%
Demographic: 76.1% white, 17.1% black, 0.4% Native American, 1.6% Asian, and 0.2% Pacific Islander. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 4.6% of the population.
Demographic: 49.3% White (including Hispanic or Latino), 25.3% Black or African American, 0.4% Native American, 5.3% Asian, 0.2% Pacific Islander, 16.5% from other races, and 3.2% from two or more races. 37% of the population is Hispanic or Latino of any race.
Demographic: 65% White (59% non-Hispanic White), 21% African American, 2% Asian, 0.7% Native American, 7.7% from other races, and 4% from two or more races. Hispanics and Latinos of any race make up almost 16%
Demographic: 82.3% white, 8.07% Black, 0.35% American Indian, 3.50% Asian, 0.05% Pacific Islander, 3.52% from other races, and 2.23% from two or more races. 6.61% of the population wereHispanic or Latino
Demographic: 61.5% White, 28.0% African American, 0.3% Native American, 4.1% Asian, 0.1% Pacific Islander, 2.9% from other races, and 3.3% from two or more races
Demographic: 86.9% White, 2.7% African American, 0.2% Native American, 5.6% Asian, 0.1% Pacific Islander, 2.5% from other races, and 2.0% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 5.8%
Demographic: 51.7% White, 42.9% African American, 0.3% Native American, 0.9% Asian, 1.3% from other races, and 2.9% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 3.0%
Demographic: 49.3% white (48.1% non-Hispanic white), 44.8% black or African-American, 0.3% American Indian or Alaskan Native, 1.8% Asian, 0.1% Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, 2.5% two or more races, and 2.8% Hispanic (of any race).
