• In Northern Minnesota and specifically within the Leech Lake Reservation communities, we are taking a different approach to creating economic opportunity for individuals. Instead of waiting for the entrepreneurial people to come to us with "brilliant" ideas, we create, test for feasibility and basically create a "turnkey" style business that could be started in our area given the human, natural and physical resources that are available. We are "idea hunters!" After all - "the future begins with an idea!" We then find capable individuals who can own and operate these ventures, provide them with technical assistance - whether it is management, financial, marketing or just moral support - and stick with them as part of their business team - over a period of time - "as needed."
   
• From my experience you often don't get much entrepreneurship genius from someone who will depend upon public funding to finance the business. In my experience, the more government involvement in a business idea, the worse the outcome. Ideas looking for an implementer and the public pays for the risk? Testing brilliant ideas? Brilliant ideas succeed in spite of conventional wisdom and by going upstream, that is the genius of entrepreneurship. Like "who would ever pay for water in a bottle to drink?"
   
• Ideas and businesses need to be designed and developed "to fit" the entrepreneur. Unfortunately most people that start businesses or desire to start businesses are technicians - many communities had "entrepreneurial vision" squashed right out of them! We call our efforts - 'fire starting'. No one is exploited - no one is forced to conform someone else's ideas - our ideas and "predeveloped" packages can be viewed as kindling for the "near extinguished" entrepreneurial fires.
   
• The investments in the businesses are coming from private individuals - the "would be owners" and investors.  What we are intending to do is create a "ready pool" of developed ideas (still room for the owner to do a lot of creative thinking and development) that will fuel the fire - get people to think outside of the norm - look in different places for ideas and create ideas that are economically viable - good for both the individual and the community.  What we have found is that many people and communities are always looking to "traditional businesses" - most of our rural communities (less than 100 population) cannot support these operations.  We are endeavoring to inspire more "bottled water" thinkers!
  
  
• Having done a lot of self employment development especially in rural communities with people with significant disabilities over the years, my bias is to begin with the individual (and I do mean individual, not groups)...figure our their "personal genius" and build the commercial enterprise around them....while leveraging the community's resources is a tried and true model, it has never served people very well...and especially when you add the complications of disability and the fact that you may only get one chance at a job at all...the match had better be good. I'd rather do what I enjoy than have to go to work in the factory that was built to exploit the local resources...Emile Durkheim's work decades ago showed the problems with this mainstream approach, and the Grameen Bank's role in Bangladesh is based on an individual model....whereas the failed rural economic development model has killed off much of the western United States...
  
  
• We shy away from the entrepreneurial definitions...they are traps for people with significant disabilities...and in fact, in most cases, people just want to be self employed, not rule the world....I think the fever pitch of entrepreneurism is a real thing, but I think most people really just want to feed their families. I live on a road in a town of 900 people, that's 2 miles long, with 24 mailboxes, and a dozen successful small businesses....the folks up and down the road are artisans, a couple doctors, a musician, et al....I am the only one with a biz plan...we're all very successful...these folks don't match the entrepreneurial mindset (I'd like to think I do...but that's not for me to say)....I highly recommend reading Ripples from the Zambezi, it really captures a good deal of what we talk about.
  
  
• Incubator success stories: find a bunch of guys who fix their neighbors cars in their driveways.   Public funding finances a non-profit or something to buy the local abandoned muffler shop and rent space/tools/etc. to them to fix more cars and do more complicated repairs with lifts, etc.  Then handle their bookkeeping, cash management, etc.   Incubated businesses fail at a lower rate than regular entrepreneurs.  His point is to match ability and interest with opportunity and better access to capital equipment.

• Karen Garritson of NDC, re: NMTC kgarritson@nationaldevelopmentcouncil.org
• www.thepeopleconnection.org
• Articles: www.griffinhammis.com

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