Making Gangsta Moves in the Innovation Economy

“Creativity and persistence is the new gangsta…”

–George Fraser

That quote from entrepreneur and networking master George Fraser defines the tech revolution that continues to course through African American entrepreneurial communities, from Silicon Valley to Detroit to Newark. In fact, this trend was evident last week with the unveiling of CNN’s Black in America 4: The New Promised Land – Silicon Valley, which highlighted a number of entrepreneurs BLACK ENTERPRISE has featured in our August cover story, “Geeked,” as well as articles and blogs on our Website. Across the nation, a series of screenings of that special placed a bright spotlight on a cadre of business visionaries as well as drove dialogue around African American participation in entrepreneurial development and STEM education. Such activity, in part, may help power further initiatives to transform urban centers into “21^st Century innovation ecosystems”–future hotbeds of start-up activity.

What’s needed to maintain forward momentum for the emerging digerati? You guessed it–capital. Financing continues to be elusive: Less than 1% of venture capital-backed companies have been Black-owned entities. But for those seeking to make connections with angels and VCs, one of the places to be last week was Newark. The invitation-only event–”A Gathering of Angels Urban Entrepreneurship Summit”–was organized by Rutgers Business School’s Center for Urban Entrepreneurship and Economic Development (CUEED) and The America21 Project, an outfit founded by a trio of tech innovators in their own right–A. Michael Green, Dr. Chad Womack and Jonathan Holifield. Green, a Huffington Post blogger and developer of digital education games, and Womack, a biotech entrepreneur and White House adviser, shared the idea for this innovation confab with me over lunch at the National Association of Black Journalists Conference in August. (Holifield, who helped create one of Ohio’s first IT-based high schools, and CUEED founding director dt ogilvie were also instrumental in its development.) They more than kept their promise of bring together heavyweight backers like  Timothy Reese, co-founder of the Minority Angel Investor Network; Terrence Hicks, VP of the investment group at Ben Franklin Technology Partners; William Crowder, a managing director with DreamIt Ventures and entrepreneurs such as BlackEnterprise.com blogger Hajj Flemings, founder of gokit.me, a personal branding strategy firm; Wayne Sutton, business advisor and creator of one of the industry’s leading blogs, SocialWayne.com; and Hank Williams, CEO of KloudCo, an early stage developer of a new data management platform.  Flemings, Sutton and Williams were all participants in the SiliconValley-based NewMe (New Media Entrepreneurship) Accelerator.

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The day I attended the conference, several start-ups, from an expansive social discovery site to a fitness app producer, shared concepts in the entrepreneurial pitch session. During a tech entrepreneurship panel, speakers offered war stories and advice: “How many of you are Angelist.com? I don’t mean Angie’s List,” Sutton says of the site that facilitates fundraising through a community of start-ups and investors. “We have to be there.”

In a session on Black capital, financiers like Ben Franklin’s Hicks revealed the following: “How do you get to the money? Get to know [a investor group’s] members. Find a champion.” Marc C. Mathis, executive director for Early Stage East, one of the nation’s largest venture capital conferences, added that his Club Pitch events rarely attract African Americans. “You have to get to spaces that will create capital resources…there must be outreach to the vast majority,” he says. “At my event, I can count fewer Black entrepreneurs than the fingers on one hand.”

Fraser echoed a similar theme related to the importance of building personal, operational and strategic relationships to achieve goals. “Strength is not in the wolf…it’s in the pack,” he asserted, citing that African Americans spend 9% of their time networking to garner roughly 50 contacts versus their White counterparts who employ 19% of their time and develop about 125 connections.

But Holifield, a former football player and economic development expert who has led, among other things, industrial innovation and tech workforce development efforts in Ohio, says African Americans can orchestrate high-impact business turnarounds and convert urban centers into “innovation ecosystems” if they act “more like more trim tabs,” the device that enables rudders to “turn big ships.”

He identified assets such as entrepreneurial talent; capital; customers; educational institutions; commercial research; philanthropic institutions; and professional services in his presentation. Next, he stressed entrepreneurs must “comprehend the speed of the game, ” understanding that today’s business strategy can’t be approached like the civil rights struggle since they now operate in a flatter, hyper-connected global environment driven by an increased democratization of information. “Everyone will not be entitled to innovate,” he said. “In fact, this is the most meritocratic economic period ever.”

Another principle calls for connection of vital components–innovation councils, university and corporate research capabilities, capital sources like angel networks and VCs, incubators and advance manufacturing operations–through what he calls “innovation asset stewardship mapping.” And his execution process is driven by A.O.L. (not to be confused with the Internet site) in which “you aggregate key wealth and resources; organize them into actionable forms; and leverage them to achieve the desired impact.”

Holifield approach requires flexible, enduring trim tabbers to effectively move rudders, ensuring the ecosystem remains sustainable but adaptable. “In this model, we encourage entrepreneurial churn. We must discard the old notion of economic stability. In [that type of environment] the lowest rates of business failures resulted in the lowest rate of business start-ups,” he says. “Entrepreneurs should not be risk averse but risk astute. That will create greater energy, vitality and creative destruction. You will have losers but you will also create new customers.”

Of course, I abbreviated Holifiled’s convention-bending model. The end game, however, is development of high-growth businesses to ignite true wealth formation and produce the multiplier effect of job creation and urban resurrection. In fact, Hajj Flemings, who co-hosted a Motor City screening with the Detroit Area Pre-College Engineering Program that brought 212 students and parents to the UAW/GM Building, seems to embrace this philosophy when he says: “Detroit was the Silicon Valley of its day with the automotive industry and Motown… My plan is to be part of a Detroit comeback…”

The merger of creativity and persistence. Now, that’s gangsta.