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Your glue work isn't overhead. It's infrastructure.
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"The glue work of ecosystem builders is foundational and essential, and articulating its value effectively is key to its protection and continuation." 🔗 From Compliance to Connection Webinar The Question That Stops Ecosystem Builders ColdAfter a combined 48+ years navigating ecosystem building, innovation strategy, and economic development, we've seen one question derail more ecosystem leaders than any other: "What's your ROI?" You know the work is foundational. Building trust. Preventing duplication. Weaving connections that make entire systems work. But translating it into the language funders understand? That's where even the most experienced builders struggle. Last year, ecosystem builders across the country began to lose critical funding. Not because the work wasn't valuable—because it was invisible. Funders couldn't see it, so they cut it. That's why we partnered with Social Venturers and EcoMap Technologies to tackle this head-on in our recent webinar: From Compliance to Connection: How Ecosystem Builders Can Protect What Matters and Demonstrate ROI. This month's newsletter breaks down the approach we shared, with practical steps you can implement immediately to protect your coordination work and demonstrate measurable value. The Builder's Dilemma: Three Capabilities, One Missing Piece🔥 Here's the tension every ecosystem builder faces: Effective ecosystem building requires three distinct capabilities: 🔨 Building authentic relationships and trust Most ecosystem builders naturally excel at the first two. The third? That's where brilliant builders get stuck—and defunded. The environment isn't helping. We're operating in a BANI Environment: Brittle, Anxious, Non-linear, Incomprehensible. Funding cycles are shrinking. Political instability is rising. Pressure on builders to "show impact" has never been more intense. Meanwhile, the coordination work that prevents $2M in duplication or accelerates deals by six months? It gets labeled "overhead". 🧠 The uncomfortable truth: The most critical work in ecosystem building is also the hardest to fund. We're talking about the invisible infrastructure. This is the relationship maintenance, partner alignment, information flow systems, and coordination mechanisms that enable everything else to work. Your glue work isn't overhead. It's critical regional infrastructure. And infrastructure requires investment. We covered real examples: Business Oregon's hub-and-spoke model demonstrates how coordination leads to less waste and new funding opportunities. That "coffee meeting intel" you're capturing? It's social capital building that opens doors and outcomes. Watch the Full WebinarReady to master this approach and learn from live examples and audience Q&A? The complete session is available here:
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Ecosystem Edge
Join readers of Ecosystem Edge for tips, strategies, and resources to launch, grow, and sustain your innovation ecosystem.
C — CORPORATES The Market Validation Strand The strand that delivers what no grant can replicate — and the one most likely to be missing. Corporates C Corporates Demand strand Pilots, procurement, and scale-up partnerships. Corporates supply the paying customers, distribution, and proof points that turn validated startups into growth companies — the demand signal an ecosystem builds toward. In roughly 4 out of 5 ecosystems we've scored, the Corporate strand reads red. Not weak. Not...
ESOs — Entrepreneurial Support Organizations The Translation Strand The strand that makes every other strand possible — and the one most likely to be running on fumes. Entrepreneurial Support Organizations E Entrepreneurial Support Organizations Translation strand Founder readiness, customer discovery, early-stage validation. The connective tissue between research, talent, and market — and the most chronically underfunded strand in most ecosystems. Walk into any tech and innovation ecosystem...
A Note from Us Before you dive into the abridged series —When we launched The Capital Braid Series, we hoped it would start a conversation. What we didn't anticipate was how generously you would show up for it. Your responses (the emails, the comments, the messages from ecosystem builders who forwarded issues to their funders, their government partners, their boards) have meant more to us than we can adequately say. You've sharpened our thinking, asked insightful questions and in more than a...