What if more people could buy into startups easily and inexpensively?

One of the key hurdles for any kind of startup or growing business is access to capital. The web is proving out many new ways to make small loans available (I'm a Kiva member) but there is no legal way to use these same tools to sell equity ownership in an organization.

Startups and small businesses can not solicit investments directly from most people without going through a costly Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) registration.

When my friend and recent business partner Dave and I started our manufacturing business we initially invested our own money and then small amounts from friends.

When our business started winning awards and growing quickly, we needed to raise outside money from a larger circle. Because we could not afford the SEC registration, we were limited to soliciting investments only from accredited investors, which is a legally defined term roughly meaning 'wealthy enough'.

We could not offer a chance to invest in our growing business through a general offering to peers in our industry, to our enthusiastic customers or to the significant audience of individuals who were looking to support green manufacturing and sustainable jobs.

Offering a wide range of people a chance to invest small amounts of money with innovative new businesses would launch millions of new enterprises. Importantly it would grow a valuable new culture of entrepreneurship and ownership throughout our society.

What if we could utilize social media and crowdsourcing to quickly and inexpensively assemble small, enabling funding streams to launch and grow new businesses and new jobs?

I think our country needs to experiment with this starting yesterday. But we can't do it because of current SEC rules which are now about 80 years old.

This may be changing.

Bloomberg BusinessWeek just published an excellent article by Professor Scott Shane, award winning author and entrepreneurship researcher at Case Western University.

My takeaway is the high value in making a change in SEC regulations that will allow small investments ($100 max) with a maximum investment to the enterprise of $100,000. This is a game changer:

Let the Crowd Buy Equity in Private Companies
Bloomberg BusinessWeek. May 3, 2011. By Scott Shane.

"The SEC should change its rules to permit entrepreneurs to use crowdfunding to sell equity. The risk would be no greater to investors than that posed by accepted online lending models."

"Every year venture capitalists and accredited business angels invest in only about 15,000 of the 27.5 million businesses in operation in the U.S., according to my analysis. Many new businesses being started in the U.S. every year could use small amounts of external equity. Analysis by sociologist Paul Reynolds in the Entrepreneurship in the United States Assessment, a survey of American adults undertaken in 2004, shows that a typical new business has only about $15,000 in initial funding, of which $6,000 comes from the entrepreneur."

Why Not Exempt $100 Contributions?

"Allowing entrepreneurs to raise equity online will impose no more risk on funders than they currently face lending money to entrepreneurs online. Last year the Sustainable Economies Law Center asked the SEC to exempt equity crowdfunding efforts of $100,000 or less, with no more than $100 to come from any individual. Allowing investors to purchase such tiny amounts of equity in other people's companies doesn't seem to impose a significant risk of financial loss on individuals."

I'm very impressed by the logic of this argument and I'm excited about the possibilities for entrepreneurship, new businesses and new jobs this effort represents.


Bloomberg Business Week article, 'Let the Crowd Buy Equity in Private Companies'

Professor Scott Shane, Professor of Entrepreneurial Studies at Case Western Reserve University. Author of 'Illusions of Entrepreneurship: The Costly Myths That Entrepreneurs, Investors, and Policy Makers Live by.' 2009 winner of the Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research.

Blog post. Case Western Graduate School of Business. Business as an Agent of World Benefit. About our work at the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen.

"What's important is getting the whole community more entrepreneurial." MIT program for entrepreneurship.

Kiva.org Online lending for global entrepreneurs.

IRS LLC page

University of Wisconsin Law and Entrepreneurship Clinic

I've just met new friends at the University of Wisconsin Law and Entrepreneurship Clinic.

This is a unique and valuable resource with a goal of successful entrepreneurship that offers a specific professional capacity in entrepreneurship law.

This piece of the fight is especially fraught with danger and knowing these good folks are out there, in the game, is encouraging and energizing. High end entrepreneurship law is a vital piece to entrepreneurial economies but this capacity is usually out of reach to most entrepreneurs.

The fact that our Wisconsin Law and Entrepreneurship Clinic is based in our amazing new Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery is very cool. Their location in the Town Center of this facility means they are sitting at the focal point of life sciences research and technology transfer in Wisconsin, the region and the world.

Our L&E Clinic is putting the 'Wisconsin Idea' into action. That is the goal of supporting education and development beyond the classroom to all areas and applied to all parts of the economy in our state and beyond.

This includes food and agriculture, a $59 billion dollar industry in Wisconsin. I believe our amazing Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen platform, and now our new network of food facilities, the Food Action Alliance, can produce great new food entrepreneurs, innovative new businesses and many new jobs in Wisconsin with the kind of resources our L&E Clinic provides.

Borrowed from their web site:

A guiding light for entrepreneurs

"Entrepreneurship plays a significant role in turning an invention or idea into a flourishing business. Yet the obstacles to starting or expanding a business often appear daunting.

What form should the business take? What’s the best way to move an idea out of a garage, dorm room or lab and into private space for commercial development? What financing options exist?

The University of Wisconsin Law School’s Law & Entrepreneurship Clinic provides free legal help to answer these and other questions. Working with the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery, Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation and more than a dozen of Wisconsin’s leading law firms, the Law & Entrepreneurship Clinic helps entrepreneurs and small business owners realize their potential.

Now located in the Town Center at the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery, the Law & Entrepreneurship Clinic offers easy access for personal appointments as well as online consultation."

Great stuff. The UW L&E Clinic is a powerful resource for those enterprises needing higher end entrepreneurship law guidance. There are many other local and regional economic development and business support groups offering entry-level help to new entrepreneurs. However, for emerging enterprises that can get to launch speed, oh my gosh, our UW L&E Clinic is a great opportunity.

Thanks to UW Law and the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery for making this great resource available.

Wisconsin's motto: Forward!



UW Law and Entrepreneurship Clinic. Thanks Eric Englund and friends!

Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery

The Wisconsin Idea

Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen

Sacramento Entrepreneurship Academy curriculum

I've met a new friend who helped direct the Sacramento (CA) Entrepreneurship Academy (SEA). In learning more about this program I'm just lit up about the possibilities this kind of approach to entrepreneurship could mean to food, agriculture and rural communities worldwide.

We've been building our Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen business model to be a platform for experimenting in food business innovation and entrepreneurship.

The SEA format focuses on college students but the same process could readily be applied to support food and farm entrepreneurs.

Here's a brief overview borrowed from their site:

"The Program:

Membership in the Sacramento Entrepreneurship Academy provides students with:

* a “real world” business education taught by successful entrepreneurs
* mentoring and support from a Board of Directors comprised of local business and academic leaders, successful entrepreneurs, and service providers
* an opportunity to develop and refine a business plan that is presented to the business community
* incredible networking opportunities
* ongoing educational programs and networking opportunities after graduation"

My new friend contributed to SEA as a Board member and Curriculum Director. Thanks Kurt for introducing me to this wonderful work and I look forward to learning more.

Forward!


Program and curriculum at the Sacramento Entrepreneurship Academy.

Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen

Enabling innovation and entrepreneurship - getting more parts on the table

There was a great essay in a recent weekend Wall Street Journal called "The Genius of the Tinkerer", by Steven Johnson, (Sept. 25, 2010).

Mr Johnson writes that the secret to innovation is combining odds and ends.

That would make a great phrase to include in any definition of sustainable entrepreneurship.

Combining odds and ends is often easiest to do with what's close by, or as this WSJ piece closes "getting more parts on the table."

There are great opportunities in every industry to reconfigure and get more smart new 'parts on the table' as we emerge into a rebuilding world economy. It's not just an opportunity. It's necessary for growth.

Entrepreneurship is based on action, not endless hand-wringing.

Among the ways we're doing it in Iowa County (WI) now is with experiments in food entrepreneurship of all kinds. The more substantive ideas we can help nurture, fledge, and develop, the more new parts on the table we can contribute, the more useful our work becomes.

Within that mix, our Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen has the potential to be a valuable new tool for creating jobs and growing economies in all kinds of geographic regions.

But any experiment is best developed and deployed in context. With other parts.

More parts like the wonderful Hodan Center that created the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen and makes these experiments possible. We have a wonderful group of peer institutions in our region. Many of us are looking for ways to work together. More parts. More value. Put me in coach.

I believe knitting together nearby institutions into a regional food hub makes great sense and has the most likely chance of success.

The WSJ article quotes scientist Stuart Kauffman discussing his idea of "the adjacent possible." What comes next arises from what we do with what we have.

I like the sound of that. Focusing on the ‘adjacent possible’ with like-minded peers has always been effective in my work life. Working with friends and organizations within the sphere of what is sensible and ‘adjacent’ will allow more combinations creating more and better parts on the table for communities to grow and prosper.

This is not a thought experiment. It's a call to action. We are working hard in Iowa County and throughout Wisconsin and our region to enable progress. We may not get everything right but we are taking action steps and learning from each one. Creating new tools and growing new networks is at the heart of this effort.

As the WSJ piece closed, "The trick to having good ideas is not to sit around in glorious isolation and try to think big thoughts. The trick is to get more parts on the table."



Wall Street Journal article "The Genius of the Tinkerer" by Steven Johnson

Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen

Iowa County Area Economic Development

Food entrepreneurship presentation at 2011 Wisconsin Local Foods Summit

Want to start next year off learning about becoming a food entrepreneur?

I've been offered several good opportunities in January to talk about food entrepreneurship and the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen.

The first of these is the Wisconsin Local Foods Summit in Elkhart Lake. The conference is January 13 and 14, 2011.

My presentation is on Thursday Jan. 13 at 10:15 AM. An experiment in local foods processing: The Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen, Mineral Point, WI.

Another good chance to share this idea will come on with the Midwest Value Added Conference, January 27 and 28, 2011 in Madison. Details to follow.

C'mon you aspiring food entrepreneurs. This is a chance for growers and their food friends to take some positive steps in the new year to build or grow an artisan food enterprise that matches your goals.

Merry Christmas 2010 to one and all!

Download 2011 Wisconsin Local Food Summit brochure. PDF format

An outline of an ‘artisan food career’ package.

We're designing our 'artisan food career' package this year as a test. We are looking for a maximum of 100 partners that can help us refine this program as early-adopters, with all that entails.

That said, the Innovation Kitchen can become a valuable platform for growing and launching innovative food enterprises.

The overview:

All of us know someone who has a wonderful signature recipe that everyone thinks should be taken to market. This ‘artisan food career’ package lets people test that idea utilizing a licensed, insured, commercial food processing plant to prepare and help market their recipes for commercial sale.

The Innovation Kitchen lets people take their best recipes to the next level.

The Innovation Kitchen can help people start and grow their own artisan food enterprises. They can do this from wherever they live and utilize the Innovation Kitchen as their processing facility and support partner.

The offer consists of 12 training and consulting sessions, leading to the launch their own commercial food product line using the Innovation Kitchen as their preparation source.

The training and consulting sessions also lead to a certification in artisan foods management.

The training and consulting sessions are ongoing and can be largely self-paced. We anticipate it may be typical for individual entrepreneurs to complete the twelve training and consulting modules and launch their food enterprises within six to eighteen months.

The Innovation Kitchen is a state-inspected, licensed, fully insured commercial food processing plant. Foods prepared here can be shipped for commercial sale nationwide.

Food possibilities:
People can utilize the Innovation Kitchen to create artisan food careers based around everything from treasured family recipes to their exciting new food innovations that fall within our processing capacity.


Why this is important:
The Innovation Kitchen can fully manage the preparation, packaging, labeling, storage and shipping requirements for the food entrepreneur.

What need does this fill:
This package allows people to develop and test their recipes at commercial scale in a professional, licensed, and insured commercial kitchen. Once the recipe plan is fully developed, the Innovation Kitchen can act as their preparation partner for processing their recipes in a safe, insured environment, with a full compliment of business, sales and distribution services available.

Artisan food entrepreneurs can utilize the Innovation Kitchen to start and grow innovative new food enterprises from wherever they live.

How can I run a food enterprise from where I live using the Innovation Kitchen?

The Innovation Kitchen can act as the ‘virtual processing facility’ for artisan food companies operating from anywhere in the U.S.

A food entrepreneur from Seattle or Vermont or Tucson or Texas could run an artisan food business from their homes with all the preparation and ‘back office’ documentation and logistics supplied by the Innovation Kitchen.

The innovation Kitchen can provide these services to an artisan food entrepreneur:
- purchase and store ingredients to your specifications
- prepare
- package
- label
- store product
- sell at our retail store
- sell on Innovation Kitchen web site
- fulfill (ship) orders taken on your website
- ship nationwide


So, with that in mind, what’s the Artisan Food Career package look like?

For those who receive this package as a gift, or those investing in themselves, people can expect training and support in two key areas:

- business planning support for starting and growing an artisan food career.
(six modules)

- food processing support for preparing and packaging your recipes.
(six modules)

These lead to a certification in artisan foods management. Each entrepreneur can decide in which order they want to utilize each training component.

We recommend you complete the business planning components while you develop your recipe plan. The business planning modules are designed to guide people into homework at their local level that needs to be addressed if you will be opening a new business, or growing an existing one.

Business training is done live online and on the phone. We have small group sessions where people gather on the phone and online for a subject-specific presentation as well as plenty of time for Q&A.

The six business planning modules include the following topics:

• Introduction to small food enterprises

• Planning your enterprises

• Organizing your enterprise

• Managing your enterprise

• Marketing your enterprise

• Capturing enterprise data


The six artisan food processing modules include these consultation and training steps: (These modules can be done through whatever combination of phone, internet and kitchen visits is most convenient for the entrepreneur.)

• Recipe development and consultation

• Purchasing information and support
(ingredient sourcing, plus packaging, labeling support)

• Recipe testing

• Required documentation

• Approved recipe plan

• Graduation and commercial recipe launch!

Graduation and commercial recipe launch will be a celebration! The Innovation kitchen will make the first artisan commercial batches of your recipe according to your recipe plan. For our food entrepreneurs that can visit, we will present them with their Graduation Certificates in Artisan Foods Management and their personalized chef coat. During the inaugural processing batch, we will be able to take many photos for the entrepreneur's web page at the Innovation Kitchen web site and their own web sites. Photos can include the entrepreneur helping process their first commercial batch, applying the first commercial labels, etc.

Completion of all modules qualifies the entrepreneur for a Certificate of Artisan Foods Management from the Innovation Kitchen.

The artisan food career package is a work in progress. If you know of anyone that might enjoy being an early adopter in this great adventure, this may be the best gift you could ever give them. Or don't wait for the gift to come your way. Invest in yourself. Either way we'll limit the first round to 100 food entrepreneurs and innovators.

If you know of someone who would benefit by having this gift presented to them please let me know. Also if you want to invest in yourself get in contact. This will be a great story and a great platform for launching new food enterprises.

Do you know someone with a signature recipe everyone says they should market? Perhaps your own recipe. Help launch an artisan food career for yourself or a loved one.

This year, give the gift of an artisan food career. Give it to a loved one. Give it to yourself.


Link to the Innovation Kitchen's Artisan Food Career page.

Recommendation to new food entrepreneurs

Many people are coming to the idea of food entrepreneurship for the first time. Owning and running an artisan food business is a compelling idea.

The Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen has many different entry points where people can enter the system and experiment with ways to grow an existing food business or start a new one.

I have a strong recommendation for new food entrepreneurs. KISS (Keep it simple, Sam).

Creating a recipe that is a simple dry-mix is the easiest, least risky, and least costly way for new food entrepreneurs to utilize a commercial kitchen. You can always get fancier and perhaps more profitable as you learn, but you've got to survive to get there and dry-mix recipes offer a relatively low-risk way to start your enterprise.

As anyone who has been around my presentations about 'best ways to use the Kitchen' will know that I am a big fan of the dehydration step for entrepreneurs new to food processing.

It is the simplest, and among the least expensive ways to preserve food, including nutritional values.

New food entrepreneurs should strongly consider utilizing the Innovation Kitchen through this dehydrator.

If you can dehydrate a signature ingredient - perhaps an heirloom vegetable or fruit - you've made it safe to store as a 'shelf stable' product. That means it can be displayed on a store shelf with no additional support such as refrigeration for perishable items.

Once you've got your signature ingredient safely stabilized you can create a mix using you signature veggie or fruit or herbs in many unique dry-mix recipes. A dry-mix recipe would be a shelf stable package of dry soup mix, or a baked dessert mix, or a waffle mix and so on.

The label can then be printed with your logo and recipe name in a way that highlights 'Featuring (Your Name) Berries!'

I think this path is especially suited for family farms who would like to market their farm under its own brand, featuring its special ingredients.

Dry-mix production can be set up to do short production runs so the investment in first test-batches can be minimized. It is also significantly easier to get your product accepted at stores if it is a shelf stable dry-mix product.

This idea of dehydration of a key ingredient, then used in a dry-mix recipe is exactly what I would do first.

For new food entrepreneurs, this dehydration/dry-mix step gives you maximum value for the least cost.

Dry-mix recipes are almost endless, serving the needs of every meal and every moment in between. There is also the entire world of dry-mix marinades and rubs and seasonings, and on and on. I think there is also a great potential for creating many new dry-mix recipes for all kinds of new uses we haven't even thought of yet.

If you are a new food entrepreneur thinking about the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen, dehydration and dry-mix recipes are paths I'd recommend.

Of course, any products in the existing dry-mix line of delicious Papa Pat's Farmhouse Recipes can be private labeled and resold throughout the U.S. If you are a distributor or would like to learn how your organization can utilize this program please get in touch.

Speaking of labels, we are setting up a private-label program right now for organizations that would like to distribute a delicious dry-mix package of Creamy Potato Soup as a business or holiday gift. The label can be printed with your custom message. This recipe is from Papa Pat's Farmhouse Recipes and is one of their very best sellers. The label will also indicate that your gift helps support the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen, The Hodan Center and our Iowa County EDC.


Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen

Oh what a Grand Opening!

Oh my gosh. We expected about 250 people to attend last Sunday's Grand Opening of the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen. More than 600 wonderful visitors joined us.

The media got it and helped the discussion in very useful ways. I'll put links below.

My favorite news sources for information about sustainable work in my region is the Sustainable Times, published and edited by George Zens. George did an excellent summation of the possibilities inherent in a facility like the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen in this month's issue. 10,000 copies are available through 350 locations in south central Wisconsin. The photos and the writing are excellent!

(one minor exception: George quotes me as saying there are 47 trillion ways to use this facility. I actually said about 47 trillion. I think there may be more… )

Some of the links below go right to the source. The TV links need to be searched using page numbers at the bottom of the video player section. Scroll back to find our date (July 11, 2010) and the title noted in the post below.

What a remarkable 'blessing' as Hodan Center Executive Director Tom Schraeder referred to our Grand Opening. I'm going to build a page on the Innovation Kitchen site that as a photo gallery of the Grand Opening and will post that link soon.

In no particular order here is a group of links to media about the Grand Opening of the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen.

Enjoy! Everyone at the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen, The Hodan Center and the Iowa County EDC sure did!

Thank you everyone who visited last Sunday or is just joining our journey.

Welcome to Iowa County Wisconsin and our wonderful new story!

Media coverage of the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen

TV:

Our first Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen TV interview. 7/9/10. "If you've ever dreamed of growing or starting your own food business but didn't have the capital to start from scratch, opportunity may await you with the Grand Opening of the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen." Thank you Carleen Wild, NBC TV 15 and NBC15.com

Your stories: Grand Opening for the Innovation Kitchen. 7/11/10. "In addition to allowing emerging or established food entrepreneurs access to the facility, the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen also has business and marketing assistance available to its clients." Thank you Chris Papst, NBC 15 and NBC15.com

Innovation Kitchen offers opportunity for entrepreneurs. 7/11/10. "Anyone can prepare their own recipes in the one million dollar kitchen, and can actually sell them. The facility also has its own food processing services. Owners say the kitchen will create jobs and give farmers and food entrepreneurs access to tools and equipment." Thank you TV 27 and WKOW.com


Print:

Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen will be boon to region. "This is a big shiny spaceship that has landed in rural Wisconsin". Wisconsin State Journal. 7/9/10. Thank you Jane Burns and MADISON.COM

Sustainable Times. July 2010 (No. 66), page 1. Great story and photos. Now available at 350 outlets across south central Wisconsin. Not yet online. Will link ASAP Thank you Sustainable Times.


Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen Offers Opportunity for Food Entrepreneurs. "It's a food Ferrari." Wisconsin Entrepreneurs' Network. Thanks WEN network.

Iowa County's Hodan Center mixes business and service to help disabled adults Great article in the Wisconsin State Journal about the Hodan Center, featured on the weekend of our Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen Grand Opening. Thank you Jane Burns and MADISON.COM

Radio:

New enterprise hopes to bring fresh, local food to the masses. Scroll the Wisconsin Public Radio archives for 7/12/10. "A first of its kind commercial kitchen is opening in Mineral Point this week. The goal of the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen is to help family farmers and small restaurants get their specialty foods on to supermarket shelves in southern Wisconsin." Thank you Gil Halsted and WPR.


Photo credits

Top photo courtesy of The Dodgeville Chronicle Thank you Jean Berns Jones!

Bottom photo courtesy of E. Terrien


The Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen is open for business!

News from the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen

Oh my gosh. Kitchen equipment gets moved in next week. I get to move in the week after. I can't tell you how exciting this is.

Very few people know the full story of how hard the Hodan Center family and their supporters worked to open this facility. Centers for adults with disabilities are facing increasing challenges. Including Innovation Kitchens in the mix of their services to our communities allows us all better, easier access to food innovation and entrepreneurship.

Innovation Kitchens can help our disabled friends enjoy a meaningful work life. They can also enable small food enterprises as well as new food entrepreneurs to grow new businesses and create new jobs. Innovation Kitchens can create platforms for profitably processing and marketing local foods within regional foods systems. My kind of win-win-win…

So, Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen news from last week…

Processing Partner news: (Processing Partners prepare their own recipes utilizing the Innovation Kitchen on a rental basis).

Initial rental rates have been set.

Let me set the stage. This is a state-inspected commercial kitchen. All new equipment. (initial list linked below). Walk-in freezer and fridge. Shipping docks. Total facility cost is well over $1 million dollars.

Rental rates have been set at $15 per hour for available slots.

That's not a misprint. With the appropriate certifications, you can rent a million dollar+ commercial kitchen for $15 per hour. It made me glad I passed my certification courses. The Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen/Hodan Center is making this facility available for rental to local food entrepreneurs during available time slots. If you would like to prepare your own recipes for commercial sale, this is a significant opportunity. (certification requirements linked below)

Preparation Partner news: (Preparation Partners utilize the Innovation Kitchen staff to process and package their recipes on a contract basis).

This is an opportunity to have your recipes prepared for commercial sale in artisan, commercial batches in a state-inspected kitchen by a community of food-certified workers who love their jobs.

For farmers, local food lovers, and food entrepreneurs, this is a significant opportunity to start or grow a virtual food business without having to invest in infrastructure or employees.

This virtual food business idea - using the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen as your Preparation Partner - will allow food innovators and entrepreneurs from around the world to launch and run exciting new food businesses from Iowa County, Wisconsin. The kitchen can prepare, package, store and ship your food innovation. What an opportunity.

There are limited slots for this. Send me an eMail if you are interested. (work email linked below).

Event Partner news: OK, this is why I started this post. Chef Joel and I had a great meeting this weekend. Everyone at the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen is excited about the local foods courses Chef Joel will be starting this summer. The courses will weave through the theme of 'Everyday Cooking with Wisconsin Local Foods'.

Chef Joel's local foods courses will be scheduled for one Saturday every month at the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen in Mineral Point. Details to follow. Here also, due to space limitations, enrollment will be limited to something like 15 to 20 local food lovers per class.

For these courses, Chef Joel will have an education/ demonstration presentation in the morning. The afternoon will be hands-on, focusing on local foods preparation (and celebration!).

All the details need to be worked out, but Chef Joel will be on hand to do demonstrations and answer questions about Wisconsin local foods preparation at the Innovation Kitchen Grand Opening. July 11 from 11 AM to 4 PM. If you're in the area come on over, meet Chef Joel and let us give you an introduction to our wonderful new Innovation Kitchen.

What's next…
The renaissance in local foods is opening up many new opportunities in food entrepreneurship. Everyone from farmers to those who love food can benefit by improved food processing infrastructure, wisely deployed at scales that makes economic sense.

The Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen is just one shining star in this movement. What fun it will be. There are so many experiments in food entrepreneurship that can be run, refined and replicated in a facility like this.

Are you a farmer that would like to experiment with your own value added product lines? Are you a food entrepreneur with a unique food innovation looking for a home?

Perhaps you should grow or start your own food business. Have I got a kitchen for you…


Save the date. The Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen Grand Opening. July 11, 2010. 11 AM to 4 PM. Ribbon cutting at 3 PM

Food safety certifications at the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen.

Innovation Kitchen partial equipment list

Work email: rickt (at) iowacountyedc.org

Ten Rules

I've been carrying a link around with me for a long while. This piece was written about web startups in 2005, but I knew immediately there was universal advice for all startups in it.

Now that the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen is about to open, I've found a great place to utilize this wonderful writing. I would suggest that these ten rules have significant meaning for local foods entrepreneurs (and most other startups).

I'm reposting this writing (edited-down-to-my-favorite-parts) by Evan Williams.

These ten rules are from a blog post that was written in 2005.

The author is the current CEO of Twitter. He has a very interesting bio (linked below) and the whole Twitter-startup thing looks like its working out pretty well for him (Yikes!).

These (edited) ten rules are among the first things I'd tell people to think about as any kind of new entrepreneur, specifically new food entrepreneurs working in the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen.

Every time I reread these I find myself nodding in agreement or laughing at myself for screwing a few up. All of these things need your attention.

"#1: Be Narrow. Focusing on a small niche has so many advantages: With much less work, you can be the best at what you do.

#2: Be Different. See #1—the specialist will almost always kick the generalist's ass.

#3: Be Casual. If you want to hit the really big home runs, create services that fit in with—and, indeed, help—people's everyday lives without requiring lots of commitment….

#4: Be Picky. Startups are often too eager to accept people or ideas into their world. You can almost always afford to wait if something doesn't feel just right, and false negatives are usually better than false positives. [Editor's note: Amen]

#5: Be User-Centric. Always focus on the user and all will be well.

#6: Be Self-Centered. Great products almost always come from someone scratching their own itch. Create something you want to exist in the world.

#7: Be Greedy. It's always good to have options. One of the best ways to do that is to have income.

#8: Be Tiny. … and the willingness of the big guys to shell out for small teams doing innovative stuff, the most likely end game if you're successful is acquisition.

#9: Be Agile. Ebay was going to sell auction software. Initial assumptions are almost always wrong. The same philosophy should be applied to building a company.

#10: Be Balanced. Nature requires balance for health—as do the bodies and minds who work for you and, without which, your company will be worthless.

#11 (bonus!): Be Wary. Overgeneralized lists of business "rules" are not to be taken too literally. There are exceptions to everything."

Thanks to Evan Williams for some really beautiful work (with apologies for my edits). There is serious startup knowledge in every one of these points. Pay attention.

I would also include that startups need a robust data capture and storage capacity, but that's for other posts.

The Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen can become a platform for all kinds of food entrepreneurs to test their skills and grow smart, creative new food enterprises.

This list is a great place to start.

My thanks to Evan Williams for the great advice!



Original 2005 EVHEAD post: Ten Rules for Web Startups

EVHEAD A blog by Evan Williams

Evan Williams is an American entrepreneur who has co-founded several Internet companies, including Pyra Labs (creator of weblog-authoring software Blogger) and Twitter, of which he is currently CEO. He was born March 31, 1972 and raised on a farm in central Nebraska. He lives in San Francisco with his wife and son.

Wikipedia Evan Williams

The Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen

Past Silos and Smokestacks

In my first year officially working in economic development I got to work with some very interesting new people. One of the most valuable was Mark Drabenstott, a former vice-president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City and recently a Director of the RUPRI Center for Regional Competitiveness and Chairman of the Territory Development Policy Committee for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. (OECD).

Mark has been facilitating a discussion about the emergence of a distinct economic region around the geography of the Upper Midwest. I found his ideas challenging, and I'm trying to help with an experiment to test the concept.

Mark just authored a great report, "Past Silos and Smokestacks: Transforming the Rural Economy in the Midwest", published by The Chicago Council on Global Affairs.

This is from Mark's executive summary: "The path to stronger economies in the rural Midwest is plain. Partnering regionally to compete globally is what's needed. This pathway will lead to scores of multicounty, self-defining regions across the Midwest. Only by combining their forces to create new businesses and good jobs at home will the towns and counties of their rural Midwest compete and thrive in a global economy where this sort of collaboration is fast becoming the norm."

"The Rural Midwest needs a bold new development strategy to transform its economy. The strategy developed in this report stands on four legs:

- Help rural communities and counties think regionally to compete globally.

- Focus public investments on transforming economic opportunities rooted in distinct economic strengths, not on smokestack chasing.

- Spur innovation and entrepreneurship, turning ideas and innovations into economic progress.

- Create a world-class entrepreneurial climate and innovation culture to grow a landscape of new companies, in the process of recycling the region's considerable wealth."


I find Mark's ideas compelling. My own response is to help take this idea into action steps that tie logical regional assets together while developing the infrastructure tools that can make these emerging regions globally relevant. Our Iowa County projects can make key contributions to the regional food systems emerging around us.

Building wise micro-region economic partnerships is vital. Wiring counties and micro-regions together to create globally relevant economic entities requires vision. I believe Mark's report , Past Silos and Smokestacks, provides that vision.

Here is a great summary from Mark: "Rural areas must partner regionally to compete globally. And they must give up the worn strategy of industrial recruiting in favor of innovative investments in their own distinct economic strengths. This bold new model for economic development is now gaining steam around the world…. The Midwest has always been good at growing things. And its hallmark values of resilience, determination and hard work will supply the essential fuel for a new century of prosperity. Let the work begin."

Many thanks to Mark Drabenstott for the contribution he made to the economic well being of Southwest Wisconsin and his work to help build a vision for connecting wisely to its regional partners.

As Mark says, let the work begin!


Download Past Silos and Smokestacks, 3.1 MB. 48 pgs. Published by The Chicago Council on Global Affairs

RUPRI. Rural Policy Research Institute.

Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)

An entrepreneur on every farm

There is a strategy for helping local enterprises expand by providing the tools and resources needed to help then innovate and grow new markets.

It's called economic gardening and I greatly support the goals of this effort.

The economic gardening community would not want me to paraphrase, but I would say the basic idea is to support existing high-growth potential businesses and innovators with information and data tools needed to grow and create jobs.

In rural regions, where are those innovators, those businesses with growth potential? As I drive down my beautiful, rural Iowa County back roads, I'm passing entrepreneur after entrepreneur as I pass farm after farm.

There is an entrepreneur on every farm.

These are enterprises that need support structures to innovate, grow, and create jobs in rural communities. The demand is there for products and services ranging from food production and processing to knowledge workers. Our rural entrepreneurs need help with the infrastructure and networks required to connect them to that demand.

I'd guess that there must be a map of the density of entrepreneurs per regional population that would include farmers as entrepreneurs. I'll bet it shows rural regions having the highest densities of entrepreneurs.

And yet, in rural areas with high levels of entrepreneurship, historically there have been a lack of appropriate resources to support these businesses.

Rural entrepreneurs need data, knowledge, and help innovating and growing into new markets.

Those prospects are changing for the better. In Wisconsin there is a great program for growing new farmers. It's our School for Beginning Dairy and Livestock Farmers.

The Director of this great program is Dick Cates who also operates the award winning Cates Family Farm in - drum roll, please - beautiful Iowa County Wisconsin.

This is the kind of economic gardening support that rural entrepreneurs need: access to knowledge and training, appropriate infrastructure, and ongoing support.

We've been trying to add to that discussion with our efforts in Iowa County over the past year or so to put some network and physical infrastructure support in place to help our rural businesses utilize the knowledge that's out there to innovate and grow and make new jobs.

The vegetable processing facility in Highland will process 2011 crops.

A group of us have helped with support/training seminars held in Iowa County to help existing farmers and new food entrepreneurs to innovate and grow into our emerging facilities and expanding markets. The focus will be on profitable vegetable production, marketing and distribution in our region.

By helping make new tools and infrastructure available to our rural entrepreneurs, we can help them prosper in these new markets.

So, first up, our Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen in Mineral Point will have its Grand Opening on Sunday, July 11. We are working hard to make this facility the most valuable it can be by offering many ways for food entrepreneurs to access preparation services and processing tools needed to innovate and grow.

The Innovation Kitchen will become a knowledge hub as well as a physical platform. In one location, we will be able to link knowledge, data, and valuable personal connections to physical resources and easy access to vendors, buyers and sellers. I believe this is the kind of infrastructure and support network needed to help our rural entrepreneurs, businesses and communities grow into emerging opportunities.

Economic gardening for rural communities should include a focus on creating easier-cheaper-faster ways for farm based entrepreneurs and businesses in rural areas to access data, knowledge, and networks. It should always include support for the physical infrastructure needed to enable innovation, growth, and increasing access to markets.

There is an entrepreneur on every farm. Let's grow this resource.


School for Beginning Dairy and Livestock Farmers at the Center for Integrated Agricultural Studies at the University of Wisconsin - Madison.

Cates Family Farm. Our natural, delicious tasting beef is from Angus and Jersey steers grown 'free-range' in the open air on excellent quality pasture. Steers are 100% grass-fed and grass-finished spring through autumn. The steers are raised without added growth hormones, and they do not receive any type of antibiotic for a minimum of nine months prior to processing.

1998 Wisconsin Conservation Achievement Award and the 1999 Iowa County Water Quality Leadership Award.

2006 - present. Animal Welfare Institute Approved. First beef farm in the USA to earn this approval.

Download information about seminars for area growers and food entrepreneurs being held in Iowa County, WI during April 2010. The focus will be on profitable vegetable production, marketing and distribution in our region. Topics include, The economics of growing vegetables for profit, The correct way to harvest, pack, store and cool vegetables for maximum quality and market value, and The essentials of food safety and Good Agricultural Practices (also known as GAP). Expanding information leads to expanding markets. Join us!

The Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen

Schools for Beginning Fruit, Vegetable and Flower Growers also at the Center for Integrated Agricultural Studies at the University of Wisconsin - Madison.

Growing businesses and creating opportunities in local foods

I believe economic development means helping create opportunities.

Inventor and Entrepreneur Clubs are a really fun way to discuss and learn about opportunities for starting and growing enterprises of all kinds.

We have ours in Iowa County typically on the fourth Monday evening of each month. People get together to discuss, ask questions, and share strategies about entrepreneurship and doing enterprise. It's really fun to see new and old friends interact and help one another with business and startup ideas.

Each month different speakers focus on specific topics. In next week's meeting we'll have Maria Davis from one of our great local foods group REAP, and Lois Federman from her wonderful program Something Special From Wisconsin. Mark will speak directly to growers interested in producing vegetables for the Highland processing and freezing plant. I'll get to cover the possibilities for food entrepreneurship and business expansion available through our new Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen. Looks like a landscape of great opportunities to me.

Here is our press release for our next Iowa County Entrepreneur Club meeting. You can download a PDF version at the end.


Iowa County Entrepreneur Club meeting to focus on growing businesses and creating jobs in local foods and regional food processing.

Dodgeville, WI –

Start or grow your own business around the growing possibilities of local foods and regional food processing!

Local foods and regional food enterprises are blooming everywhere. This is becoming a great way to start or grow businesses in Southwest Wisconsin.

Join us at our next Entrepreneur Club meeting Wed., Feb. 24 in Dodgeville, WI. This meeting will specifically focus on the strong possibilities for food and agricultural entrepreneurship in our region, with four featured speakers:

Maria Davis from the REAP Food Group (Research, Education,
Action, and Policy) will discuss 'Buy Fresh Buy Local Southwest
Wisconsin' and the demand for local foods.

Lois Federman from Something Special From Wisconsin will
discuss the possibilities for working with farmers markets,
produce auctions, and Community Supported Agriculture
(CSA) programs.

Mark Olson from Renaissance Farm will discuss plans for the
Individual Quick Frozen (IQF) vegetable processing and
freezing facility planned for Highland. This section is meant to
give regional growers as much information as is available so
they can plan future farm activities with this facility in mind.

Rick Terrien from Iowa County Area Economic Development will
discuss business support available for area growers and farm-based
entrepreneurs. Rick will also discuss business startup and
expansion possibilities at the new community-access Wisconsin Innovation
Kitchen, a state-certified food processing facility available to growers and
food entrepreneurs, operated by the Hodan Center in Mineral Point.

Grow your own business around the growing possibilities of local foods and regional food processing!

Please join us for a great evening of information sharing at our next Iowa County Entrepreneur Club meeting on Wednesday, Feb. 24. There will be a social hour beginning at 5:30 and the meeting will begin at 6 PM. The location is at the Stonefield Apartments, 407 E. Madison St., Dodgeville WI. The event is free to the public. Bring a friend!

Download more information, agendas, location maps and much more at http://www.iowacountyedc.org.5100b.html

Networking among attendees will be encouraged in the evening's program. "Our goal is to grow the network of entrepreneurs and those that support them in the Iowa County area" said Rick Terrien, Executive Director of ICAEDC.

The Iowa County Area Entrepreneurs Club is an informational forum where entrepreneurs, inventors, existing businesses, new businesses and people thinking about starting their own businesses can come together to encourage each other and share challenges and encouragement. The group meets on a monthly basis, usually the fourth Wednesday of the month. More information about the group is available on the ICAEDC website at www.iowacountyedc.org/5100b.html or by emailing info@iowacountyedc.org

Download a meeting flyer for this meeting focusing on growing vegetables for the proposed Highland processing and freezing facility:
http://www.iowacountyedc.org/imagesb/ Meeting_Flyer_2_24_10.pdf

END.

If you're in the area please stop by!

Iowa County. Come grow with us.

Iowa County (WI) Area Entrepreneurs Club

REAP Food Group. Research, Education, Action and Policy on Food Group is building a regional food system that is healthful, just, and both environmentally and economically sustainable.

Something Special From Wisconsin. I believe Iowa County Economic Development is the first County EDC member in Wisconsin. I love this program.

Mark's Renaissance Farm. Who knew cinnamon rolls could become an addiction?

Download this media release in PDF format

Information about growing vegetables for the proposed Highland processing and freezing facility.

Planning

The working title for this post was 'Ulrich and Eisenhower'.

I was reminded once again this week of the powerful role preparedness plays in small business planning.

If you're going after outside investments and loans, you will need very specific financial projections based on assigned income and expense assumptions. All enterprises need this as they mature.

For most self-funded startups and newly emerging enterprises these kinds of financial projections should not be your first step. The money stuff will be built in of course, but you need to learn about a much wider range of subjects before you can start your financials.

Our Iowa County Entrepreneur's club this week was amazing I thought. Ulrich and Alex Sielaff from the Sielaff Corporation in Mineral Point shared a detailed overview of how their award winning design and manufacturing skills recently earned them Small Manufacturer of the Year from Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce.

Ulrich is rich in intellectual property - 25+ patents - but he is even wealthier in business experience. He described a life of enterprise that has merged opportunity and threat successfully for decades. It was a truly wonderful story that I learned a great deal from.

What also struck me later that if you looked back on the history of how their Sielaff Corporation had to innovate and respond to new market conditions it would not look like a straight line.

Now imagine if you were starting a new business and you were asked to create a formal business plan using the map Ulrich and Alex described. Build in all the zigs-and-zags. Chart out all those shifts and turns the Sielaff Corp. had to take to make opportunities out of change - rapid, unanticipated shifts in products, markets and globalization just to name a few.

That kind of business plan map - for a new or emerging small business - would not go over well with people lending money or investing.

However, there is a great lesson in the Sielaff story for startups and newly emerging enterprises. Ulrich and Alex have created extensive social networks (the face-to-face kind) within their industry. They stay at the leading edge of manufacturing by building deep knowledge and respect for all their stakeholders, and really great design into every part of their enterprise.

The Sielaffs succeed and innovate because they have a wide, proactive knowledge of their field and can change wisely and quickly, as necessary.

Looking backwards, that probably didn't produce the kind of business plan map Ulrich would have written at the beginning of his enterprise. However, what an admirable and successful place it took them.

The Eisenhower quote I bring in often goes like this, "Plans are nothing; planning is everything."

To me this means that you must thoroughly research as many possible inputs to your endeavor as possible. You will indeed craft a plan based on what you learn. But as the story goes, it's the journey that's more important than the destination.

The plan you design is typically not the one that happens. What will determine if you grow or fade is your knowledge, resources and love of your field. Your ability to survive and grow will depend on your answer to that challenge. But that same challenge is also your greatest opportunity as Ulrich and Eisenhower and countless legions of small businesses can attest. Building your skill and the ability to adapt rapidly and wisely will be your greatest resource.

The strongest advice I can share with any new startup or emerging enterprise regarding business planning is to fill the toolkit with as much knowledge and information about your entire field, not just the specific slice you will compete in. Learn widely about every detail, every subset of the field you will be working in. Create systems to store incoming data. Build in processes to continuously search out new resources.

Take good notes. They will serve you well as your own business map develops. I promise.

More important, Ulrich and Eisenhower promise.

Happy planning. Enjoy the journey.


The Sielaff Corporation, Mineral Point, WI

Welcome to 2010! Entrepreneurship opportunities in regional foods

A friend sent me to a good Business Week article ("Entrepreneurs Keep the Local Food Movement Hot", by John Tozzi, Dec. 18, 2009) discussing a new study called "Community Food Enterprise: Local Success in a Global Marketplace". The study created multiple case studies focusing on the economic and community benefits of local and regional food enterprises.

I like that this study includes a focus on local ownership of food businesses. Developing local ownership of local food infrastructure is at the core of the Driftless project.

Here's what Woody Tasch from Slow Money has to say on the subject: "Advocates for local food say success depends on nurturing an interlocking network of small companies that produce, process, distribute, and sell food." Tasch continues," "We as a society and as an economy need to start optimizing for a large number of small things, not just relying on a small number of large things."

The study was a project of the Wallace Foundation, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and The W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

Here is an overview: "The local food movement is now spreading globally, yet is not well understood. To many, local food is exclusively about proximity, with discriminating consumers demanding higher quality food grown, caught, processed, cooked, and sold by people they know and trust. But an equally important part of local food is local ownership of food businesses. This report is about the full range of locally owned businesses involved in food, whether they are small or big, whether they are primary producers or manufacturers or retailers, whether their focus is local or global markets. We call these businesses community food enterprises (CFEs)."

"This report provides a detailed field report on the performance of 24 CFEs, half inside the United States and half international. We show that CFEs represent a huge diversity of legal forms, scales, activities, and designs."

They found 15 strategies for creating success consistent with their community character:

-Hard Work
-Innovation
-Local Delivery
-Aggregation
-Vertical Integration
-Shareholder Loyalty
-Speed
-Better Access
-Better Taste
-Better Story
-Better Stewardship
-Better Service
-Revitalizing Local Economies
-More Community Spirit
-More Social Change

As almost 5 years of posts on this blog will attest, this list above matches sustainable work practices I know to work.

I have not finished the full report, but this looks to be a wonderful effort toward identifying measurable economic and social benefit that arises from the development of Community Food Enterprises (CFEs). The individual case study I've been paying close attention to and highly recommend is their "Zingerman Community of Businesses".

As we work on our CFEs in the Iowa County area in the coming year, - especially the Driftless project - this kind of empirical support will be highly valuable.

There is a strong demand for local and regional foods and not enough infrastructure to help suppliers meet that demand.

Local foods and regional food systems are emerging as one of the hottest of all topics in economic development. What a time to be a local foods entrepreneur, investor, or - best of all - consumer!

Happy New Year 2010!


Community Food Enterprise report

Business Week Article, Entrepreneurs Keep the Local Food Movement Hot.

Slow Money Alliance

Thanks for the Business Week article tip to Neil Lerner, a friend and Director of the Madison area Small Business Development Center.

.

Building development landscapes

The idea I've been working on this year is that it's possible to build economic development landscapes. That is, design systems that let people enter the process of economic development at multiple points. You don't plant a tree or two. You try to create a sustainable landscape in which a wide range of interrelated opportunities for growth exist.

In my current job, because of the amazing assets we have in place, I'm working to make Iowa County a premier location to learn about and participate in agriculture and local foods entrepreneurship.

Our Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen will allow beginning food entrepreneurs to get into the game professionally, with greatly lowered barriers to entry.

Existing small food enterprises can use the kitchen to reach new, higher levels of quality, sales and profitability.

At this end of the landscape spectrum there will be many, many points of entry for individuals and small businesses.

At the other end of this spectrum the Driftless Foods project is moving forward. This has felt like the best startup idea I've ever seen since the first moments that Mark and I started talking.

Driftless Foods offers a chance for some serious meta-level good. There is a strong component to helping farmers stay on their farms by building the infrastructure they need to process local foods at a scale that can profitably support regions. It's a way to help people to get into farming and to help existing farmers securely diversify their sources of income.

The project recently got a very nice recommendation from the Wisconsin Secretary of Agriculture, Mr. Rod Nilsestuen.

"The Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection strongly supports Driftless Foods and The Iowa County Economic Development Corporation in their efforts to create a vegetable processing and freezing facility.

A facility such as this will help meet the growing demand for locally grown foods, a demand that is increasingly important to the vitality of Wisconsin agriculture.

I firmly believe that Wisconsin's future is tied to the success of our agricultural sector, and the success of that sector depends on innovation and diversity. We need to keep farmland in farming and farm families on their farms. This project can help us do both. It also creates new job opportunities in your region and opens new economic development possibilities.

I can also see in this project the opportunity to create a model for processing locally grown foods that other communities can follow. This model promises to celebrate local foods, be profitable, and return value directly to the producers, the communities they live in, and the regions that support them."

What a wonderful, insightful show of support. Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary!

So with the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen opening at one end of the spectrum and Driftless Foods launching at the other end of the spectrum, we've got a fairly diverse development landscape underway.

In the middle of that spectrum are some really delightful co-conspirators helping to knit this effort together.

We met today to plan the first information sessions for our regional growers. This will all take varying amounts of time. The Innovation Kitchen will be open in the Spring for food processing on a small to moderate scale. For the larger scale of Driftless Foods growers need to plan well in advance for joining this kind of enterprise.

We will have 3 informational meetings focusing on Driftless Foods in January and February. Because this is a diversified effort, we will also be able to support interested growers with information about the Innovation Kitchen.

The first two dates are not quite set, but the details for the third meeting are in place. We will dedicate the February 24th Entrepreneur Club meeting in Dodgeville to this grower information session. I'll post details below.

So, the development landscape grows across the spectrum and we can soon begin inviting people in.

This has been an amazing year watching and learning from this experiment in economic development landscapes.



Letter of support from Wisconsin Secretary of Agriculture Rod Nilsestuen

Link to the Iowa County Entrepreneur and Inventor Club page. Our Feb. 24th meeting will focus on opportunities for regional growers being created by the Driftless Foods project.

Photos are from our magical Shake Rag Alley in Mineral Point. Our EDC was able to host the quarterly meeting of the Thrive Economic Development Pros at Shake Rag Alley last Friday. Our meeting was in the replica 1840s carpenter's cabinet shop. Karla and her great team had it beautifully decorated to receive area children for Santa's visit the next day so the atmosphere was great. Thanks to all who came and shared beautiful Iowa County with us!

Mark Olson and Renaissance Farm

The 'Eight Courtesies' of effective enterprise.

These posts have consistently tried to advocate for sustainable, repeatable business practices.

This brings me back often to Tom Peters. I am thrilled to see Tom has a new book coming out in early 2010. Tom Peters is at the top of my list of transformative business thinkers.

His new book is called "The Little BIG Things". Sounds like Tom at his best. He is building his current presentations around what he calls "The Eight Courtesies". I'll highlight them below. Buy the book.

Yes, the economy is awful and people are getting hurt badly, but it doesn't mean that we can't explore options for finding a way forward. There are opportunities for 'the rest of us' to start and grow new and emerging enterprises. I have a powerful sense that new kinds of local and regional trade will continue to emerge worldwide for the foreseeable future. It's happening from Australia to the West Bank, to Avoca, WI, and to China (hello Yongchao!).

There are deep and fruitful opportunities here. I am increasingly seeing my immediate contribution to the subject being enterprise creation through local foods.

Individually, these new enterprises may not seem Wall Street worthy, but in aggregate they represent a lot of positive, sustainable, long-term value for economic development on Main Streets and across regions.

So how do you participate? Think you've got to be some kind of uber-trained CEO type to run a new enterprise effectively? Think again.

It's nothing of the sort. You can do it. You DO do it now in other areas of your life. After 35+ years of entrepreneurship I couldn't have described effective entrepreneurship any better than Tom Peters is doing right now.

Here are the eight most important management tools Tom prescribes in The Little BIG Things.

"Epigraph:

Courtesies of a small and trivial character are the ones which strike deepest in the grateful and appreciating heart.—Henry Clay

The 'Eight Courtesies'

1. Stay in touch. (MBWA: Management By Wandering Around)

2. Invest in relationships. (Make friends. Obsess.)

3. Listen. (Respect. Learn. Student. PROFESSIONAL. Sustainable Competitive Advantage #1)

4. Ask. (Engage. Inspire. Consult. React.)

5. Thank. (Appreciate. Acknowledge.)

6. Network......

7. Apologize. (Unequivocal. Rectify. Over-react. Forgive.)

8. Practice thoughtfulness. (Kindness is free. This is ... STRATEGIC.)"


You heard it here: The Renaissance age of entrepreneurship is just beginning. Remember Tom's 'Eight Courtesies' as you journey.

You can do this friend. Start. Engage. Be courteous. Enjoy.


Eight Courtesies: From TP blog 11/24/09

I'm going to buy this book: The Little BIG Things. New book by Tom Peters out February 2010

Regional Food Systems

My friend Mark Olson and I, with a scary-smart group of emerging friends, have been working out possibilities for our Iowa County initiative. This is an economic development prototype to build interrelated local food processing clusters, operated at a scale to meet institutional demand. These facilities will be located strategically across rural economies and organized in a way that is mutually self-supportive. The design of this system moves the bulk of the revenue through the management and production levels, delivering it to the producers and their communities. There is a link at the end to the summary white paper about this initiative that we presented at the Slow Money Institute in Madison this summer.

To me, creating experiments in all kinds of regional food systems is needed. This is a startup effort and startups are not straight-line endeavors. Stuff needs to get learned. Policies and procedures need to get worked out. That doesn't mean go slow. It means to hurry up. Let's make our mistakes early, often, and inexpensively. Our Iowa County / Driftless Foods initiative is a startup designed to to develop and document the knowledge needed take the next steps.

With that base in place, our goal is replication elsewhere: finding ways to deploy successful regional food systems models in other places and at bigger scales.

I had a great meeting this week with a nearby multi-state region of 10 to 15 counties. This may become an opportunity to replicate the Iowa County prototype in a larger, more diverse region sooner than later. I've got some great new friends across this area. I am not only confident, but flat-out excited that we could knit together a world-changing leadership team for this project. Our goal is to create a reproducible regional food system, this time at a bigger scale. The idea is that a successful multi-county (and especially multi-state) model would be one that could be replicated nationally in short order.

Of course, every area will have its own ag (and non ag) resources to contribute to these regional systems. However, I believe the process of organizing and deploying regional food systems is what's critical for making them successful and reproducible. That's at the heart of what is valuable here.

And, to walk-the-walk, I had a chance this week to say what I thought local food processing clusters most needed right now in response to a question from people who could make my answer happen. I had a chance to ask for a lot of money but (per last week's post) I actually said enabling legislation.

On first review I was sure I should have said money, mostly because it's likely true. However, if regional food systems are to be made replicable, they really need some meta support, like enabling legislation, that will give people working on local food initiatives some actual tools to help them move the discussion forward. We need to quit talking about this and take some action steps. We need to create opportunities, enable infrastructure, build markets, create jobs and jump start economic development by nurturing market demand and giving our entrepreneurs a stable platform to grow from.

I remember the early days of recycled paper. It was a good idea that everyone talked about but was stuck in kind of a niche market of early adopters. When the Wisconsin government decided to emphasize the use of recycled paper in its purchasing, that business took off and we've never looked back.

I would suggest that we don't need more requirements, but if the enabling legislation were to just say that opportunities to utilize locally grown and locally processed foods should be explored, it would be huge. The locally processed language would give permission and support to people within local institutions - schools, hospitals, etc. - to see what they can do with local foods. Their buying power will ultimately most enable the success of this process. I would not make these institutions buy locally grown and locally processed foods. I would make it easier for them to do.

If the enabling legislation just indicated that locally grown and locally processed foods were included as a recommendation, but not a requirement, many valuable interests could be served, bypassing potential battle lines.

So, a really wonderful week for local foods processing. Future's so bright… I gotta wear shades. Based on what we learned this week we're planning on ramping up the pace of the rollout of our Iowa County initiative.

As my friend Mark always signs off, be well.


Download PDF white paper on our local food processing initiative first presented to the Slow Money Institute gathering in Madison this summer.

A great interview with Salli Martyniak of Forward Community Investments and Wally Orzechowski of Southwest Wisconsin Community Action Program about community investing. Wally is a friend and is a leader in our team rolling out the Driftless Foods / Iowa County initiative. Salli is a new friend who leads one of the most valuable enterprises I've come across in any field, Forward Community Investments

An interview with Mark Olson about his wonderful Renaissance Farm and adding value to agriculture.

Slow startups. Get a realistic understanding.

Slow startups allow people to fit a small business into their lives in sustainable ways. You get to decide how much time and money you can spend. Both can be small but if you act on your small business during the time set aside, you can come out the other end with something valuable to you, financially and culturally.

At that point you have a real enterprise. You'll have a base of unique skills and knowledge that will allow you to take your enterprise in any direction you want. You will have customers, cash flow and a track record. You will have learned to control your data. These are the pieces required to jump to the next stages, if that's what you want to do.

This is NOT an approach for people who need immediate relief. That's a different story. This story is about slowly building a platform that can support your life and your dreams for the long term.

However, this does not advocate dreaming only. This idea is about doing. Making mistakes, pulling/learning yourself up. Becoming a professional entrepreneur. Spending as little money as as possible. Getting a realistic understanding of your market.

How do you do that? It means going slowly, with time and money allocated as you have available, but once allocated that plan is executed.

It means trying. Learning. Capturing the data. Try, learn, repeat.

Our new Innovation Kitchen in Mineral Point (they've poured concrete!) will be a great platform for testing this idea. People will be able to try out different models of food entrepreneurship at radical-cheap price points due to wonderful public/private partnerships in our region.

I'm very specifically designing paths into the Innovation Kitchen in such a way that it makes its easy for new startup entrepreneurs to say 'no'. This will help create better, smarter and more sustainable entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurs need clear paths for easily and inexpensively testing their ideas. However, at any point in the learning process the entrepreneur should be celebrated for saying 'no' and supported when switching directions as markets dictate.

Giving up on your preferred, stated direction - saying 'no I don't want to do THAT'- is not a sign of business weakness it is a sign of enterprise (and personal) strength. Learning to say no is perhaps the most important skill to develop while gaining a realistic understanding of your ideas.

So, back to the new Innovation Kitchen for examples. This is a unique opportunity to put these slow startup ideas in play.

Anyone who wants to launch a new food business by working in the kitchen will be offered the opportunity to do a low budget shakedown cruise with their idea.

New entrepreneurs can first meet with the foodservice staff at the Innovation Kitchen to discuss their recipes and processes. Our staff can help with everything from business planning to vendor sourcing to cooking tips to nutrition labeling to packaging and everything in between. The entrepreneurs can take a dry run through all the steps in the process. Innovation Kitchen staff can also help prepare custom production plans to match the needs of the entrepreneur and prepare cost estimates for production runs.

The entrepreneur can plunge in or change plans at this point. They can evaluate the demands on their time and money and may choose to launch their enterprise using a different model. Fine! Good to learn early and inexpensively. First ideas are rarely the best. Changing isn't failure. It's success.

If they get this far and still want to proceed, the new food entrepreneur will be offered free slow startup business plans to start filling in and help to launch their enterprise.

This shakedown cruise can also include a production run of the food entrepreneur's recipe. The entrepreneur will get to cook in a professional, state-certified kitchen under production conditions. The learning opportunities will be invaluable.

They will come out the end of this process with plans probably modified from those they entered with. Importantly they will have a production run of their recipe, professionally processed and packaged, ready to commercially market. They will have created their own product that they can use to test market and launch their new businesses or product lines with. The thrill of getting to this point with a unique product of your own creation and taking it into the public space is exhilarating.

As an economic developer I see my role as giving as many people as possible as many opportunities as possible for testing entrepreneurship. The next step is to provide as many alternatives as possible for those who want to switch directions. They have self-selected as emerging entrepreneurs. They are a seam of gold. The next thing to do is provide as many enabling paths as possible for smelting that gold into value.

The slow startup entrepreneur trades their time for knowledge.

Slow startup entrepreneurs pull themselves through the early learning curve utilizing the best help and the best tools available to them.

The slow startup entrepreneur carefully builds a realistic understanding of what it takes to wake up an idea, as well as the risks and rewards of entrepreneurship and how to plan for both.

One foot in front of the other. Try, learn, repeat.

That's how you gain a realistic understanding of your entrepreneurial idea.

This is not a doom-and-gloom scenario. Just the opposite. Slow startups are a path to an achievable solution that can make your life better. Every mistake you make, every bit of wisdom, every new digit of data puts you ahead of potential competitors. It's your intellectual property. You are earning your 'patents'.

How do you get a realistic understanding of the process? Start now. Get smart. Go slow.

You can do it.


Driftless Appetite. One of my favorite food blogs, celebrating life and local foods in Southwest Wisconsin. Also new friends!