What community doesn’t want to learn about identifying and growing its entrepreneurs? Communities of all sizes, large and small, are looking for ways to bolster economic growth. While research shows about 60 to 80 percent of new jobs created annually are the result of existing business expansion, new business start-ups create about 40 percent of new jobs annually (about 6.5 jobs per new business on average) (Badal, 2010).
How can we partner with the chambers of commerce, economic development offices and youth leadership programs to cultivate interest in growing new businesses in these communities?
We recently had the opportunity to tour the world headquarters of Gallup (the longtime ‘polling’ organization that has more recently gotten into the business of ‘StrengthsFinder’ among other things). In addition to hearing an interesting overview of the company’s history, we also learned of the newly unveiled ‘Entrepreneurship StrengthsFinder’ from Gallup representatives. We left there convinced that this tool provides us opportunities to stimulate interest in exercising entrepreneurial talents and abilities with audiences of all ages and walks of life.
To learn more about this new tool for identifying entrepreneurial talent, click here.
(Submitted by Greg Davis, Professor and Assistant Director, OSU Extension – Community Development, and Rose Fisher Merkowitz, Associate Professor and Extension Educator, Miami Valley EERA)