The CEO

Arnie Cooper (1999) did a short vignette in the Academy of Management Newsletter on the progress in the field of entrepreneurship in which he describes how the field is becoming more systematic, because academicians now understand interrelationships better and are developing more rigorous concepts and theories. He suggests that the open systems orientations are stimulating an extremely energetic time for the study and application of entrepreneurship, because such orientations opens up so many areas of possible analysis. The horizons are being pushed back in all directions as we accept that a much larger and more complex system of interrelationships now must be addressed in the study of entrepreneurship. Cooper points to the great challenge we face to apply what we learn across academic, public and private sectors. In past eras, the cultivation of entrepreneurs has been fairly laissez faire, random or indirectly manipulated through abstruse Keynesian-like interventions. But today, nurturing macro-economic environments and localized, micro-economic systems (enterprise zones, industrial parks, incubators and so forth) are as much the work of the average citizen and academician as it is the politician-economist. Indiana County’s Center for Economic Operations (CEO) is an exemplary case. In Indiana County’s CEO, a wide variety of public and private constituencies are working together to coordinate their efforts to create innovation and fresh enterprise in the County. Public and private institutions involved in the economic development mix meet monthly (more often, if necessary) for two hours to talk issues and strategies. County government leads the organization, but representatives come from the Chamber of Commerce, IUP, private sector firms and other public and private stakeholders who are intent on coordinating their efforts and working together to make economic development happen. The participation is as diverse as the vested interests in economic progress at any given time (different issues tend to bring different configurations of the stakeholders. Everyone takes the meetings seriously and works hard to get there and contribute (there’s always a quorum), but we have fun too, because we like what we are doing and we respect each other.

New, integrated partnerships like the CEO and other local and regional efforts, which are constantly being designed in communities across this nation (and the world), are becoming more commonplace, because mainstream societies recognize how important wide-ranging connections are among the entrepreneur, the community and the economic world. Leadership and involvement in the entrepreneurial process must permeate across all economic constituencies and levels in society. Emerging economic development (like nascent economic organizations) often depends on incubators, subsidized economic zones, free services, supportive social relationships and incentives from other socio-political networks, which are strategically managed. Locals are competing for jobs, companies, grants and so forth in modern, global markets. Literally every state, region and local is trying to clone entrepreneurs, attract them, graft them, germinate them and even spontaneously create them. Supporting subsystems will continue to develop in education, financing, and infrastructure, and will have to grow geometrically, to foster and encourage the levels of entrepreneurship needed to progress this world’s social networks to the next level.