About
Ecosystem Building Leadership Network (EBLN)
OUR MISSION
The network’s mission is the advancement of entrepreneurship ecosystem building as a valued practice, a trusted profession, and as a model for economic health and community wellbeing.
OUR VISION
Our vision is that local, regional, and national economies are more resilient, equitable, and vibrant.
OUR VALUES
We collectively value: diversity, equity, and inclusion, entrepreneurship ecosystem building, trust with interdependence, entrepreneurship stewardship, and data-informed activities and decision-making.
GUIDING PRINCIPLES
Our values are operationalized through following our theory of change and these guiding principles:
1) choosing and levering a framework to ask whose voice is missing
2) focusing on mission (advancing the field) before organization
3) declaring interdependence
4) managing through trust, not control
5) promoting others, not ourselves
6) seek impact data
Background
The origin of the Ecosystem Building Leadership Network (EBLN) stems from the work of 1,500+ participants of the ESHIP Summits hosted by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation between 2017 and 2020. Over the course of three years and four Summits, ecosystem builders from all 50 U.S. States, Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, and 20 other countries gathered to join collective efforts to explore and progress the entrepreneurship ecosystem building field of practice. Through a collaborative, community-driven approach, participants gathered and created tools, resources and knowledge to better support communities that are working to empower entrepreneurs. Learn more about the ESHIP Summits, including the ESHIP Goals, the seven goals that emerged from the work, that serve as the foundation for collective action to build the tenants of the ecosystem building field.
Through the ESHIP Summit work to advance entrepreneurship ecosystem building as a practice, the need to centralize and coordinate actions serving the field through a field-wide infrastructure emerged. This structure will further accelerate wider understanding and adoption of ecosystem building as a practice in economic, community, workforce and entrepreneurship development in the United States. Thus, the first phase of development, called the Ecosystem Building Leadership Project (EBLP) was launched in 2022.
During this first phase, EBLP brought together ecosystem builders (EBs) and the National Resource Providers (NRPs) who serve them with training, convenings, information and other resources, to co-design the infrastructure.
With the help of a facilitation team and a network researcher, a collaborative advisory group of national support organization leaders formed and working teams came together to develop a charter, governance model, communications plan, sustainability and resiliency model, and network health recommendations. This work culminated in the election of a Provisional Council charged with translating those recommendations into a plan for standing up the Ecosystem Building Leadership Network.
The Provisional Council delivered several detailed recommendations to the network in the late summer and early fall of 2023. In November of that year, the network elected a more permanent Leadership Council under the fiscal sponsorship of Community Initiatives. In June 2024, the Leadership Council hired Andy Stoll as the network's founding executive director.
See the People page to learn more about EBLN Leadership Council members and staff, as well as the core leadership teams and advisors who guided the effort through each phase of the project.