Background
Established in 2003, the UMKC Innovation Center is the largest and most established entrepreneurship center in the Kansas City region, serving more than 6,000 aspiring and existing business owners each year in Kansas City and across the state of Missouri. At its core is its educational programming that supports thousands of entrepreneurs each year in gaining basic skills to start, operate and scale businesses. The organization also serves as the convener for the entrepreneurial ecosystem in the Kansas City region, working across the University and the community to connect, support, sustain and empower entrepreneurial efforts.
Training, one-on-one counseling, connections to capital and to myriads of resources help grow business owners and their companies resulting in new businesses, jobs and wealth for the community. Across the country, technologies and methodologies developed through Center programs assist more than 100 other regions in building entrepreneurial communities.
This position will also lead a university-wide initiative, Roo Ventures, to unite entrepreneurship programs from across campus to connect research, technology transfer, COREs, education and other resources to improve the experience for students, faculty and community members by offering well-coordinated space, access to university resources, programming, mentorship, and funding. Additional resources within the Kansas City regional entrepreneurial and commercialization ecosystem supplement UMKC’s programs, guiding startups within the region into viable early-stage companies that contribute to the regional, national, and global economy.
Services are provided across the UMKC IC’s four pillars:
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Entrepreneurial Education supports thousands of entrepreneurs each year in gaining basic skills to start, operate and scale businesses. Training, one-on-one counseling and connections to capital and myriads of resources help grow business owners, their companies and jobs and wealth for the community. This pillar is supported by the U.S. SBA Missouri Small Business Development Center and U.S. DOD Apex Accelerator programs.
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KCSourceLink and MOSourceLink connect a network of more than 700 business-building resources across the region and the state of Missouri that work together to build a better environment for entrepreneurship and connect entrepreneurs to the right resource at the right time. The KCSourceLink/MOSourceLink resource center offers Personal Action Plans to move aspiring and existing entrepreneurs forward in their business. KCSourceLink has also become the de-facto organization for monitoring and measuring the Kansas City regional ecosystem, offering research on what is and isn’t working, identifying gaps in services and convening across the region to fill those gaps.
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Technology Venture Studio is the starting point for faculty, students and the community to evaluate, mature and commercialize early-stage technologies. Access to subject matter experts and serial entrepreneurs, proof-of-concept support, product development bootcamps, access to early-stage investment, connections to accelerators and more come together here. The UMKC Office of Commercialization is embedded in the Studio, working to move UMKC technologies to market and driving connections to industry that result in sponsored research contracts.
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SourceLink provides consulting and software tools to help cities, states and regions nationwide build better-connected and more cohesive infrastructures to spark, support and sustain entrepreneurship. The SourceLink program is currently spread across 100+ communities across the country, including Puerto Rico. SourceLink’s proprietary technologies and methodologies have been licensed to entrepreneurial communities across the U.S. In addition to utilizing the same methods and software, summits, meetups and virtual workshops bring this large and diverse group of organizations together on a regular basis.
