Jacksonville’s Chamber of Commerce, called JAXUSA, has spent the last few years with a focus on fostering innovation and supporting entrepreneurs, and it's found a way to connect those early-stage companies with the larger business community.
That was a topic of discussion at one of the Greater Louisville Idea Development Expedition (GLIDE) panel discussions last week in Florida. Dozens of Louisville business and community leaders were in attendance.
Dr. Carlton Robinson, chief innovation officer for JAXUSA, said one issue they found early on was that the Jacksonville business community was working in silos.
“As we moved into the entrepreneur space, then we had businesses who really wanted to engage, but they didn't know how to connect with the entrepreneurs,” Robinson said. “So then we kind of had these silos happening in the community.”
Early-stage entrepreneurs didn’t know how to get involved with JAXUSA or what resources the chamber offered them. Meanwhile, established companies didn’t know how to find innovative entrepreneurs that could help solve some of their challenges. The chamber decided to initiate a "call to innovate," acknowledging issues and calling on entrepreneurs to solve them.
“So instead of just having a pitch contest, or someone telling you about a business, what if we had entrepreneurs that were actually pitching solutions to use cases that our enterprises are challenged with?” Robinson said.
From the start, the goal was to have about 20 to 25 people apply for the Call to Innovate program. Robinson said the chamber just put it out into their networks, and right away, it had 50 people apply from five different states.
Robinson said it’s the job of the chamber to leverage its position and connect Jacksonville’s businesses, whether it’s the small business community or the large enterprises. The strategy was called Open Innovation, allowing the large companies to come to the chamber searching for entrepreneurs.
Karen Green is the former chief innovation officer for Brooks Rehabilitation and current principal consultant for BXcellentAdvisory Services. She said Brooks got involved with Open Innovation while she was still a part of the team.
“One of the problems that I saw was that we hadn’t really defined what problems we are going to innovate with or what areas, and it was all over the map,” Green said. “It's an exercise in really trying to define what is it we're trying to solve, and then giving that to the entrepreneurs to say, this might be a solution that we can link together on.”
The chamber has other programs to help small entrepreneurs like the JAX Bridges program. That initiative acts as the facilitator for smaller suppliers and larger corporations looking to procure product locally.
JAXUSA vets all the suppliers involved in JAX Bridges, so the corporations don’t have to. Robinson said it creates an informal community of business to lean on each other and boost economic development.
In a similar vein, JAXUSA established the Lewis and White Business League, which specifically targets getting small minority businesses in the conversation when it comes to local procurement.
Carrie Davis is president of community development nonprofit Wealth Watchers and chairwoman for Lewis and White Business League. She said the Lewis and White Business League specifically targets well-established minority businesses.
Minority businesses go through the small business programs offered by the chamber, but once they are out, they no longer have the resources to connect with large companies, she said.
“How do we get [small minority businesses] in front of the businesses, to procurement departments, that could really help them to get the larger contracts?” Davis said. “As Carlton said, because we are the chamber and we do have that relationship proposition, we were in the best place to be a matchmaker to bring those two groups together.”
In case you missed it, we have more coverage from GLIDE on the city's proposed innovative public transportation system and how different industries combat workforce challenges.
