As part of my work with Maine Accelerates Growth I presented this deck to the Economic Development Council of Maine recently. Ping me with questions.

1. Creativity for Growth & Prosperity
Presentation for the Economic Development
Council of Maine
By Jess Knox
Olympico Strategies

2. Job Creation
SB
SB
SB
Existing SMB that
Innovate
High
Impact &
High Value
Important
employment “churn”
Critical drivers of
job GROWTH
VS.

3. Terms of Art
• What is this “creativity”?
– The ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns and
relationships.
• Genius, imaginativeness, ingenuity, inspiration, inventiveness, originality,
resourcefulness, talent, vision
• What is “innovation”?
– The process of solving an existing or new problem from a new and
different perspective.
• Change, alteration, revolution, metamorphosis, upheaval, transformation,
breakthrough, modernization, novelty, creativity, originality, ingenuity,
inspiration, inventiveness
• What is a “startup”?
– A startup is NOT a phase of company, a startup is a company with an
attitude of high-growth or high-impact over a compressed period of
time (i.e. Ave. of 40% growth of 3 years)

4. What are the trends for companies?
• Critical for growth and survival – startup approach is different than
the corporate approach;
• Non-traditional internal events:
– Creative Café – JAX
– Startup Weekends – Coca Cola
• Partnering with external organizations as well
– Maine Startup & Create Week – WEX
– Off-site work environments in co-working and innovation spaces
– Internal hackathon – GE in Nashville
• Looking at companies who’ve been able to do it for years – like
Pixar Studios

5. How Do Companies Build Creativity
• Let’s look at one of the most creative companies in
history – Pixar – here are their 8 rules:
– #1: Don’t work to hard
– #2: Don’t focus on preventing problems
– #3: Encourage personality
– #4: The most important thing is how you product makes
people feel
– #5: People are the most important
– #6: Winning companies destroy fear & build trust
– #7: Don’t abandon your values
– #8: Be Original

6. The Trends for Communities
• Culture is essential to entrepreneur success

7. Building fertile soil

8. Culture Matters for Ecosystem Success
“We believe that our research has deepened understanding of
this ‘cultural’ aspect. Attitudes toward risk-taking can be
perpetuated through the ecosystem because entrepreneurs
shared their experiences, which were by definition risk-taking.
Then, entrepreneurs could comment on others’ activities, receive
feedback on their own, and change for the better. This mutual
process was perceived as the supportive culture. It is harder to
change the general culture of people or of a region, but it is
easier to introduce these kinds of specific mechanisms through
which people interact.”
From the Kauffman Foundation study of St. Louis Ecosystem (2014)

10. Identify
Promote
Participate &
Connect
Highlight & Celebrate
current and emerging
entrepreneurs
Highlight and
COORDINATING existing
events and encourage
experimentation with
creative ones to create
“collisions”
Grow positive public
opinion, desire and
understanding of high
growth entrepreneurship
community
Facilitate the mix
for strengthening
the social web
e.g.. Coordinated Regional
Events Calendar
e.g. grassroots
communication &
social media
e.g. effective
storytelling of starts,
successes &
connections
e.g. using tools to
map of our
communities

11. $$
$$
ENTREP
ENTREP
ENTREP
ENTREP
ENTREP
Coworking
spaces
arts
Serial
TREPs
City of
Coworking
spaces
ENTREP
ENTREP
artscreatives
creatives
City of
Fed
Support
Fed
Support
Regional
Entrep
Ecosystem
Non-
profits
Existing
innovative
companies
Existing
innovative
companies
STEM
STEM
Colleges
& Univ
Colleges
& Univ
We build the
connections…
…between each
other and with
entrepreneurs.
NOTE: The
WEB is the
social fabric
of
connection
By strengthening
the social web
supporting the
community.

12. Building a FUNNEL…
Inspiration
Opportunities to Try
Incentivize the Leap
Mentors & Coaches
Incubating & Accelerating
Growth
…to move “want-trepreneurs”
to entrepreneurs
…& existing companies/ restarts
from “wann-grow” to growing
companies.
Incentivize the Leap
Growth
Aspirations
Training to Try
Talent Support

13. Empowering a corps of
evangelizers for growth
We know that the attitude of
growth is contagious
We know the most trusted
messengers are entrepreneurs
We can tell more stories, connect
more companies & inspire more
entrepreneurs with more people
evangelizing on behalf of GROWTH

14. • Founded in late 2011
• A digital watering hole for entrepreneurs and
startups
• Now a coordinated monthly calendar
• It’s how we got connected to Brad Feld
• Already attracting folks to Maine
• More than 185k unique visits since founded

15. • Begun in 2011, funding runs to the end of 2015
• Accelerating connections, talent & companies
• More than 9,000 people attended events
• 165 interns placed in high-growth Maine
Companies
• 214 companies helped directly (TopGun & AV
– Have a 41% average growth rate
– Have a 14% new hire rate, compared to a 0.8% state
average
– Support an average wage that is 27% higher than the
average wage for all privately owned entities in Maine

16. • Founded in 2014 – put together in 100 days
• 3,029 attendees from 21 states
• All volunteer run event
• Raised $125k in sponsorships
• RESULTED IN Popular Mechanics ranking Portland #4 best new city for startups
• 2015 – 7 days: June 22-28th
• 3 tracks: small business owners who want to take more risk, food innovation &
scale and growth
• 75 + events; Less showcase and more trends and learning
• Costs more than $200k to put on
• Speakers from Lyft, Dept. of Commerce, 1776, Amazon, Google, General
Assembly, Dropbox, Tech.co
• 2016 – 7 Days: June 20-27
• Already secured senior product designer from Amazon and the editor of Forbes
Magazine

17. Other examples:

18. How Do We Fund Ecosystems?

19. A Long-term and Sustainable Vision for Maine
The Maine Accelerates Growth Initiative
(MxG) accelerates the growth of companies, communities,
and talent by funding, creating, and leveraging high
impact entrepreneurship and innovation programs and
events through a collaborative and complementary
network of organizations and individuals propelling
prosperity across Maine
We study emerging best practices
to continuously improve our approach
to creating an extraordinary future for Maine.
Our Goal: To facilitate and leverage the
investment of at least $7-$10 million in Maine’s
innovation and startup ecosystem by 2025.

20. The Most Innovative Approach in The World
• Focused on Culture
– Key to unlocking the potential of our companies,
communities, and talent.
• Institutionalized GBYG (Give Before You Get)
– Drives ecosystem success ahead of silos through structure
and execution
• Responsive To The Market:
– Can quickly experiment (and fail fast & cheap), assist with
scaling & drive towards sustainability of initiatives
• Inclusive of Diverse Stakeholders & Ideas
– No credentialing needed to participate; welcoming to
local, regional & national best practices
• Co-opetition:
– Driving excellence and collaboration simultaneously

21. A “To and Through” Funding Model Leverages the Maine
Community Foundation (MCF)
MxG Field of
Interest Fund
1--Donors can raise money into the
MxG Fund
4--All “through contributions” will
trigger matching $$ (Pending
commitments)
Startup
weekend
Biz PK
3-institutional knowledge & experience exchanged
new Innovation
Program
2--Organizational Partners can raise money
through for MCF & ecosystem benefits
5--Programs & events get seed funding from MxG Fund

22. Donor Community Benefits
• Ability to Field the Newest Approaches
– Whether donors want to support social impact innovations or synthetic biology
cluster development or the latest in K-12 innovation education, MxG can assist
donors seed, test and launch the most innovative and forward-thinking approaches
to growth.
• Unbiased Due Diligence
– The unique co-opetition model means those with the deepest domain experience
are vetting new proposals, sharing national best practices and insisting on
performance. This is overlayed with traditional oversight by major donors to ensure
standards and principles are upheld..
• Increased Efficiency in Ecosystem
– Our partnership with MCF allows for increased efficiency for events and programs
and thus reduces overhead.
• Higher Rate of Community Return
– By leveraging matching grants, we provide a multiplier affect for donors
unlike any other program provides.

23. Phase 1 progress (< 90 days)
• Organizational Partners
– Committed:
• Our Katahdin
• Maine Startup & Create Week
• Greenlight Maine
• Maine Venture Fund
• Maine Technology Institute
• Maine Center for
Entrepreneurial Development
• Univ. of Maine Innovation
Programs
• Target Technology Center
Corporation
• Thomas College
– In Discussion:
• Univ. of Maine School of Law
• Fundraising
– Into:
• MTI Matching
Undesignated Fund
Pledge of $200,000
– Through
• $80,000 pledged

24. So Now What…
• Always tell you story and encourage others to
do so too, find ways to make it public.
• Look for opportunities to build community
capacity for creativity, innovation and risk
taking.
• Celebrate learning from failure
• Find entrepreneurs to lead
• Keep a 20 year mindset

25. Thank you