Social Venturers is hosting a series of Fireside Chats to discuss what makes ecosystem builders effective. Every two weeks from September 10th until December 3rd, they are hosting peer-to-peer knowledge sharing sessions and you are invited!
#5 Connect people top-down, bottom-up, inside-out etc. (November 5th, 2020, noon & 2. p.m. EST)
“Change creates tension. There is often friction between the “bottom” (the grassroots) and the “top” (formal leadership). The bottom is made of entrepreneurs, inventors, artists, and other independent thinkers who dislike formal structures. The top consists of leaders and managers who oversee institutions, access large networks, control knowledge, and possess built-in social capital.
This friction between top and bottom can sometimes cause heated disagreements over scarce resources that sow division and retrenchment. But it doesn’t need to be that way. In successful ecosystems, people find ways to overcome parochial differences and build diverse networks of mutually advantageous relationships.
In our roles as ecosystem builders, we achieve this by:
- Bridging social boundaries.
- Building communities of trust.
- Building social feedback loops. (ESHIP playbook)
Join Social Venturers on November 5th, 2020, at noon and 2. Pm EST for a one-hour Fireside Chat about Ecosystem Building principle #5: Connect people bottom-up, top-down, inside-out, etc.
Format: Fireside Chats
Fireside Chats are peer-to-peer knowledge sharing sessions with entrepreneurial ecosystem builders passionate about leveraging entrepreneurship in their communities as a force for good. We respect each other’s views, we speak from our own experience and we are comfortable saying “I don’t know!”
Rather than best practices, we are hoping to elicit:
- Stories from the field with a focus on lessons learned
- Proven practices: What has worked for you, what hasn’t? What will you try next?
- Tools and resources: Which tools do you rely on to do your work well? Which resources do you confidently recommend to your peers?
- Questions: What do YOU want to know more about? Which questions are worth diving deeper into?
Output
Each Fireside Chat will become a blogpost in Social Venturers Insights section with a focus on stories from the field, proven practices, tools & resources, and remaining questions. You can read the first Insights piece from this series here: #1 Put entrepreneurs front and center.
To learn more about leadership in entrepreneurial ecosystem building, check out Social Venturers’ latest series on Community Leadership.
