Idaho’s National Allies, Part 2

Thanks for all the “cards and letters” re my prior post!

The Kauffman trip to KC was productive in many respects. Confirmed that there’s serious money out there for entrepreneurial training initiatives, especially broad partnerships, especially for K-12 & community colleges - sustainable entrepreneurship too. Potentially money for Idaho… But there are steps Idaho will first need to take. I’ll be in contact with these folks again this week, so let me know your thoughts!

Multiple big foundations, multiple federal sources - and they are all talking to each other. Ergo, if you look smart to one, you look smart to all of them. (but… LOL) Important to know what[and who!] they are and aren’t funding… I’ll report on that soon.

However, these top dogs are VERY aware of what’s going on here - it always unnerves me a bit to realize that these high-powered folks are watching us.

The upside? They see our potential. The downside? They see our in-fighting, instead of partnering. They see us not pursuing best practice, they see us not taking advantage of the expertise we already have locally, they see a destructive tech/ag divide, etc. More upside? They want to help, iff we’ll let them.

So Idaho’s task is to start looking smart! These experts know who Idaho’s team players are; more teaming up will thus make a great place to start. Reverend Rick’s I2A, anyone? Ideas welcome, as always!

p.s. I’m off to another Kauffman event on Nov. 8 - this time I’m an invited speaker on best practices in cross-campus entrepreneurship training [actually cross-campus is the ONLY way to do it right... and keep doing it right.] More later, but… multi-school is definitely the wave of the future.

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