Anyone who has started a business knows that the process isn’t easy. Entrepreneurs often rely on resources from other businesses, organizations and government bodies, but sometimes even navigating through those resources is difficult.
SourceLink, a provider of research and development that helps communities strengthen their entrepreneurial ecosystems, has successfully created networks in more than 50 communities nationwide that connect area entrepreneurs and business owners to the resources they need.
Most recently, SourceLink and the Northwest Missouri Roundtable of Economic Developers joined together to launch NWMOSourceLink.
“Making those connections between entrepreneurs and service providers is key to supporting our area businesses and building a strong local economy,” said Keli Morris, facilitator for Northwest Missouri Enterprise Facilitation, a member of the Northwest Missouri Roundtable. “NWMOSourceLink allows us to cultivate entrepreneurship in our region.”
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Growing the local economy
NWMOSourceLink connects entrepreneurs and business owners in the 18-county region of northwest Missouri to services providers in their area that can help them start, scale and accelerate their businesses.
“Small businesses are the cornerstone of Missouri’s economy,” said Greg Tucker, state director of the Missouri Small Business and Technology Development Centers, a strategic partner for NWMOSourceLink. “The success of our small businesses in our urban communities and rural regions is essential to creating jobs across the state.”
Tucker said that when small businesses receive help and investments, dollars remain within local communities, which then strengthens neighborhoods.
“The launch of NWMOSourceLink is a first step forward to helping Missouri businesses of all types find and use regional resources to help them start and grow,” said Tucker.
Reinvigorating Missouri’s entrepreneurial past
Annette Weeks, a champion for NWMOSourceLink and the director of Center for Entrepreneurship at the Craig School of Business at Missouri Western State University, said that Northwest Missouri’s legacy of business innovation goes back to William Waddell, founder to the Pony Express, J.C. Penney and Walt Disney.
“We want to help unleash and reinvigorate that,” said Weeks. “We want our region’s innovators, dreamers, makers and doers to know that entrepreneurship is a viable path for individual and regional prosperity and to know that help—local people who know the area, the industries and how to build businesses here in rural Missouri—is available.”
Weeks said the first step is to make those entrepreneurial resources visible and accessible.
“We’ve identified 80-plus organizations that support entrepreneurship throughout the 18-county region of northwest Missouri,” said Weeks. “These organizations are ready to help aspiring and established entrepreneurs test the feasibility of their ideas, find markets and customers and grow their businesses in northwest Missouri.”
Organizing services with The Resource Navigator
NWMOSourceLink partners provide a range of services including business plan development, market analysis, financing, operations assistance, education and more. Organizations include small business development groups, government entities, loan programs, libraries, main street programs, chambers of commerce, technical or legal assistance providers, organizations specializing in helping women and/or minorities and more.
Weeks said the support providers have been organized into The Resource Navigator, SourceLink’s interactive database that allows people to quickly and easily find the right resource for their business challenge by location, industry, business stage and specific challenge.
Users of The Resource Navigator answer a few questions about their business stage and needs and get a curated list of local resources that offer the services they need to start and grow their businesses.
“NWMOSourceLink launched on June 20 and we’re already seeing people from the region using The Resource Navigator, calling the hotline and accessing the content on the website,” said Weeks. “Knowing that there’s an infrastructure of support––that there’s help out there to feed their entrepreneurial dream––is key to helping aspiring entrepreneurs pursue their ideas and build businesses.”
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Christine McGuigan is the Managing Editor of Silicon Prairie News.
