Page 25 - 1-Entrepreneurship and Local Economic Development by Norman Walzer (z-lib.org)

14 Norman Walzer and Adee Athiyaman

insurance and governmental regulations to identifying potential customer
bases and marketing products or services.
While many local sources of technical assistance on these issues may be
available, they often are not interconnected or, as mentioned previously, are
not provided in a systematic way. The research by Woods and Muske rein-
forces the view that successful entrepreneurship programs should involve
an integrated approach where entrepreneurship is part of an organized lo-
cal economic development strategy. This system must be community-wide
with full support from both public and private agencies.

Best Practices

Successful entrepreneurship efforts differ, depending on community size,
location, economic base, and population characteristics. Some use broad
development approaches while others target specific industries or popula-
tion groups. Regardless of approach, the important point in designing or
starting a local initiative is that many successful models can work in a com-
munity.
Best practices, including one statewide and one regional, are provided to
illustrate how the entrepreneurship concepts outlined previously have
been, or can be, incorporated into successful local initiatives. Macke (chap-
ter 11) describes several statewide initiatives, including HomeTown Com-
petitiveness (HTC). These programs have several common characteristics
that maximize the possibilities of success in launching a local effort.
The HTC, started in Nebraska in 2000, is especially useful because it is a
broad, community-wide effort that incorporates many, if not most, of the
principles for successful programs set forth earlier in this volume. It helps
communities raise local funds and support through community founda-
tions that foster an integrated approach to community development. The
program focuses on youth entrepreneurs as well as building leadership ca-
pacity in other groups to make economic development sustainable. The
HTC approach is only one of several successful statewide initiatives across
the United States that illustrate the types of efforts to consider in designing
a local strategy.
Not all successful entrepreneurship programs are organized statewide; in
some cases, it is more reasonable to consider a regional effort, building on
local assets such as used in Ohio. Holley (chapter 12) describes the Ap-
palachian Center for Economic Networks (ACEnet) which created a Re-
gional Innovation Economy in the rural Appalachian region of southern
Ohio. This highly acclaimed entrepreneurship program started with a com-
munity kitchen incubator where residents can experiment and develop lo-
cal recipes and market them to a regional and national markets.
The ACEnet strategy builds on local assets, namely specialty foods using
local agricultural inputs, and is aptly called Entrepreneurship with a Local