Your Entrepreneurial Ecosystem
Your Entrepreneurial Ecosystem

Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Foundations: Education

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Following up on the last post, another foundation of your entrepreneurial ecosystem is education. Education of a business owner is linked to higher chances of business continuation and higher levels of employment growth. Even average education of the local population is linked with higher chances of business continuation and higher levels of employment growth.

Given the importance of education, reports from the USDA, like “Rural Education at a Glance, 2017 Edition,” are invaluable. These reports are particularly valuable for rural areas, because rural areas have historical struggled with lower education levels compared to metro areas. Specifically, compared with rural (nonmetro) areas, urban (metro) areas have historically had a higher share of adults with bachelor’s, postgraduate, and professional degrees.

While rural areas have improved in terms of the nominal levels of high school and bachelor’s degree completion, the relative increase has left them still further behind metro areas in terms of the percent of the population with a bachelor’s degree. In their new report, the USDA finds that between 2000 and 2015, the share of metro adults with at least a bachelor’s degree grew from 26 to 33 percent, while in rural areas the share grew from 15 to 19 percent. On the positive side, the report points out that the share of rural adults with less than a high school diploma did improve significantly, dropping to 15 percent in 2015, close to the share for urban adults (13 percent), and that the share of adults with an associate’s degree was also similar in rural and urban areas.

See more at the USDA’s report at the link here: https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/eib171/eib-171.pdf?v=42830

Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Foundations: Rural Health

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There are many important factors related to your entrepreneurial ecosystem, but the factors that makeup the foundation of your entrepreneurial ecosystem are of particular importance. In general, this foundation is comprised of workforce development, public policy, physical infrastructure, and healthcare. Despite these factors being the foundation of your entrepreneurial ecosystem, particularly in rural areas, healthcare is often difficult to measure. Even outside of rural areas, there are limited resources available for those interested in rural health.

In an effort to increase the understanding of issues in healthcare related to rural areas, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention just launched a new site today focusing on issues around rural health. A series of reports will follow and will be posted to the site.

As the website notes, “Some rural areas have characteristics that put residents at higher risk of death, such as long travel distances to specialty and emergency care or exposures to specific environmental hazards. Rural Americans tend to have higher rates of cigarette smoking, high blood pressure, and obesity. Rural residents report less leisure-time physical activity and lower seatbelt use than their urban counterparts. They also have higher rates of poverty, less access to healthcare, and are less likely to have health insurance. All of these factors can lead to poor health outcomes.”

See the link here for more information! https://www.cdc.gov/ruralhealth/

Welcome to the Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Blog!

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Welcome to the Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Blog! This blog will serve as a one stop shop for all things related to supporting entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship in your community.

“Entrepreneurial Ecosystem” refers to the individuals, organizations, and institutions outside of the individual entrepreneur that support or inhibit the choice of a person to become an entrepreneur or the probability of that entrepreneur’s business survival and growth.

Posts include links to events, reports, and new research that may affect entrepreneurs in your community. Some posts are more in-depth while others are just announcements.