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How does a community explore the possibility of implementing the Entrepreneurial League System®?
Implementing an initiative like the Entrepreneurial League System® (ELS) involves a serious commitment by a community or a region. We are often invited to make a series of presentations on our approach to various leaders and stakeholders in the community, after they have reached a consensus about the need to build an entrepreneurial culture and secure a more promising economic future. If there is serious interest in proceeding after these initial meetings, the next step in the process involves conducting an ‘Articulation’ Study to determine the requirements for implementing the Entrepreneurial League System® (ELS) and the potential impacts. Completed over a period of three to six months, this project involves describing or “articulating” the situation in your region with regard to the: 1. Population of entrepreneurs and enterprises and their distribution in the pipeline by stage of development, skill level, age, markets, etc.
2. Organizations that provide technical and financial assistance to those entrepreneurs and where they fit in the pipeline; and,
3. Structure of the community (i.e., population characteristics, leadership, resources, etc.) and the nature of its support and attitudes toward entrepreneurship. On the basis of the findings, we then prepare a set of recommendations and a business plan for implementing the ELS, customized to local conditions. The results are presented to the community and key stakeholders (including sources of funding), for a decision to implement the Entrepreneurial League System®. The cost of this phase depends on the size of the region. How does Collaborative Strategies work with communities to implement the Entrepreneurial League System®?
Our goal in designing and implementing the Entrepreneurial League System® is not only to help create entrepreneurial communities and improve their economic performance, but to help communities develop their ability to achieve these outcomes for themselves. Achieving this result requires a well-designed system of operations (that we have already developed and implemented in many places), talented people to operate the system locally, and a skill-building process by which they learn the system and the skills necessary to execute it successfully. Collaborative Strategies licenses the operating system as well as the tools and provides the training and on-going coaching necessary for communities to operate an Entrepreneurial League System® themselves. We partner with your community to form a team; together we are jointly responsible for producing results. Success in this type of a venture requires a high level of collaboration between us (i.e., Collaborative Strategies) and the leadership in a particular community. We (Collaborative Strategies) have the knowledge and expertise to successfully build and manage an Entrepreneurial League System®; you have the intimate knowledge of local conditions and how the ELS must be adapted to work there. Together, we establish an integrated leadership system whose performance is greater than the sum of the parts. Our role in this system is to take talented, entrepreneurial people with the basic skills from your community and train them to perform various specialized functions using specific ELS tools and techniques – much like an apprenticeship in the building trades. The higher their initial level of skill, the more quickly they will proceed to reach journeyman status. The most critical piece of the skill-building process is coaching (the other two being the tools and initial training). This coaching process, which diminishes over time in intensity as the skills are developed, is where the learning and adaptation of the ELS to local conditions takes place. This process also allows us to monitor progress and more importantly, assess the quality of the ELS activities being delivered and make adjustments. The Entrepreneurial League System® is a high-touch system (for its clients – the entrepreneurs) and for the local community. Over time, our participation declines to the point where our focus is on monitoring the quality of results and engaging in continuous improvement by sharing the knowledge gained from implementations in other regions in the form of selective coaching, seminars and operational upgrades to the business system and tools. Throughout the implementation process, most of the funds spent on the ELS stay in the community to pay for the local talent and overhead necessary to operate the system. How much does it cost to implement the Entrepreneurial League System®?
The cost of implementing the Entrepreneurial League System® depends on a number of factors including the number of entrepreneurs participating in the system, the desired outcomes, local conditions, the cost of local talent and available resources, etc. In some large multi-state and multi-county regions in which we are working, we are planning an implementation that grows from 50 entrepreneurs in year one to 300 entrepreneurs in year five. The size is up to the community, although we urge the leadership to pursue a scale that will be sufficient to truly transform the culture as well as the economy of the region. These choices and associated costs are detailed in the implementation plan prepared as a part of the Articulation Phase. Can we implement an Entrepreneurial League System® on our own?
The Entrepreneurial League System® is a trademarked and proprietary version of a similar but more generic approach to enterprise development that we also developed called the Entrepreneurial Development System (that was the inspiration for the $12 million grant program initiated by the Kellogg Foundation in June 2004 to fund six regional systems). The concepts, values and philosophies behind this approach have been described in a series of published papers that are widely available. We encourage people to utilize these ideas in their enterprise development activities. All we ask is that they reference the originators, where appropriate. However, access to the operating system (integrated processes, management procedures, documentation, job descriptions, software, etc.) and tools (entrepreneurial skills assessment, needs assessment, game plan strategies, coaching methods, etc.) that have been developed specifically as a part of the Entrepreneurial League System® is reserved for those communities and organizations that are willing to license them under the conditions described above. Communities can develop their own tools and systems, and in the competitive marketplace of ideas and approaches, we encourage them to do so. But the benefit of the ELS is that we have already gone through the lengthy and costly process of design, development, testing, refinement and implementation under many different conditions (e.g., urban, rural, high tech, etc.). Like a specialized franchise, those communities and organizations that choose to implement the ELS can be operational and achieving productive outcomes within a few short months, significantly short-circuiting the long startup process and avoiding the need to invest in the Research & Development activities required to create the specialized tools for these functions. Can we just license individual tools?
No. The tools are only available as a complete package. The elements have been designed to be mutually-reinforcing, so that they will produce systemic effects (where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts) when used together. Without the training and coaching Collaborative Strategies provides in the use of the tools, they would be useless. There is a great deal of art in this work, which we share with our clients. Who is Collaborative Strategies willing to work with?
We seek to work with, or to even help create, organizations or collaboratives that have responsibility for the economic health and well-being of the community or region as a whole, not just a particular group or population within the community as is often the case with individual enterprise development programs or service providers. The answer will depend on local circumstances, but we are open to approaches from a wide variety of individuals and organizations.
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