Pathways to Rural Prosperity with Don Macke

Growing numbers of rural Americans are becoming marginalized, profoundly impacting the viability of communities. Don Macke and Frank Spillers, owner of Rural CommunitySolutions, explore the marginalization of rural Americans and its implications for rural community economic development.

In this episode of Pathways to Rural Prosperity, Chris Gibbons, founder of Economic Gardening, joins Don in a conversation about the role of market intelligence research as part of a robust entrepreneurial ecosystem. Chris shares the history of this historic and possibly oldest entrepreneurship movement as well as some fun stores of how Economic Gardening is making a difference with growth entrepreneurs.

Rural entrepreneurial ecosystems come in all shapes and sizes. This episode focuses on the Hannah Grimes Entrepreneurship Center in Keene, New Hampshire and its founder Mary Ann Kristiansen. This episode coincides with the release of a new case study on the Center and its upcoming September 2021 Radically Rural conference in Keene.

Every day thousands of Boomers are retiring in America, a trend that will continue for three decades. Retiring Boomers are a massive economic, social, and entrepreneurial driver in rural America today. In this episode, Don and Shelley explore retiree-led development as a nontraditional entrepreneurial development opportunity for nearly every rural community.

Rural Minnesota is blessed with very strong community economic development infrastructure and culture. This episode of our podcast features veteran economic developer, Pam Bishop, with the Southern Minnesota Initiative Foundation and its highly successful entrepreneurial communities’ initiative – Rural Entrepreneurial Venture (REV). Pam shares stories of empowering entrepreneurial communities in rural Southern Minnesota.

In this episode of Pathways to Rural Prosperity podcast, Don Macke hosts Maria Meyers and Kate Pope Hodel with SourceLink and the authors of the book Beyond Collisions: How to Build Your Entrepreneurial Infrastructure. They share how SourceLink came to be and how it provides infrastructure for entrepreneurial ecosystems across the country.

Our guest on this episode is friend, colleague, and teacher--Milan Wall with the internationally recognized Heartland Center for Leadership Development. Together we explore the keys to community capacity building, which is the ability of a community to impactfully engage in its own development. Milan is a practitioner and thought leader in this space.

In this fourth and final episode of our series on e2’s Development Framework, Shelley and Don talk about how a community can gather metrics, short stories and testimonials to create a compelling narrative for community stakeholders. Funding the metrics and story capture work at a robust level and ongoing basis is often a big challenge but demonstrating impact is key to the sustainability of entrepreneurial ecosystem building efforts. 

Don and Shelley talk about e2’s field-tested and comprehensive development framework for organizing communities to effectively and efficiently engage with entrepreneurs, network them to resources, and generate desired community economic development impacts. They address how communities can learn from entrepreneur interactions to inform smart entrepreneurial ecosystem building.

This episode is Part 2 of a four-part series focusing on entrepreneurial ecosystem building in rural America within e2’s Development Framework. Shelley Paasch and Don Macke discuss the role of strategic assessments in helping communities find their “starter” or “next stage” entrepreneur-led development strategy. They cover development opportunity assessments, entrepreneurial talent assessments, and relevant entrepreneurial development resources to create smart strategies.