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Entrepreneurship as a possible path out of poverty

By Chuck Wasserstrom

Mike Bradshaw is a life-long entrepreneur, connector and thinker.

As the first Entrepreneur-in-Residence in the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga’s Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE), Bradshaw—who began his role in July—will lead initiatives that spread entrepreneurship across campus and better connect the CIE to the Chattanooga entrepreneurial ecosystem.

“One of the things that I see myself doing here is being a conduit at an operational level, providing people—usually in the form of interns, often in the form of mentors—to the community to be involved in entrepreneurial activities,” he says.

By collaborating with Chattanooga’s robust entrepreneurial support organizations, Bradshaw says he is “bringing all the pieces onto the table” to create systematic engagement opportunities among UTC students, faculty and staff with the business community.

Bradshaw has a long history with UTC, going back to graduate studies in the Gary W. Rollins College of Business. Bradshaw received an MBA in 2008, has been an adjunct faculty member since 2011 and made a plethora of connections on campus and in the community as director of The Company Lab from 2013 to 2017. Better known as CO.LAB, the latter is a business management consultancy dedicated to accelerating startups in the region.

With community engagement at the forefront, his functions as Entrepreneur-in-Residence will include helping further develop the CIE living-learning community for students with interest in entrepreneurship to live and learn together. He’ll also oversee a mentor program for student and faculty entrepreneurs; develop a startup internship program; and act as a coach in CIE’s pilot program for measuring and developing entrepreneurship skills.

Creating an entrepreneurship program to alleviate poverty and increase wealth-building among the economically and socially underrepresented within Chattanooga’s urban core is a work in progress. It’s based on the idea that anyone can be an entrepreneur and that entrepreneurship can be a pathway out of poverty.

“So many people have ideas in their minds, but they’re just chasing those thoughts around,” Bradshaw says. “You need somebody to help guide you, to take one of those thoughts and test them in reality. Otherwise, you’re just reflecting all the time and never really doing anything. Even if it’s helping someone sketch out an idea on the back of a napkin, it’s getting an action going, irrespective of your economic class.”

The initiative is based on a model created by Michael H. Morris, a professor of entrepreneurship and social innovation at the University of Notre Dame.

In 2020, Morris and Notre Dame’s McKenna Center for Human Development and Global Business launched the Urban Poverty and Business Initiative (UPBI), a collaboration among South Bend, Indiana, community partners who work with the economically disadvantaged to help start and grow sustainable businesses. South Bend has a poverty rate around 25% (as a matter of reference, according to 2020 U.S. Census Bureau statistics, the city of Chattanooga has a poverty rate of 17.6%).

Morris also is the founder of the nationally acclaimed Veterans Entrepreneurship Program (VEP), which provides free training, mentoring and management expertise for small businesses founded by military veterans.

“While the state of Tennessee had had a relatively dynamic economy, the poverty rate is meaningful—especially in the bigger cities like Chattanooga,” Morris explains. “In a community like Chattanooga, there is a fair amount of poverty and meaningful needs in the African-American community, the Hispanic community and among refugees and the formerly incarcerated.

“Entrepreneurship is one of those solutions. It’s not the be-all-end-all solution, but venture creation can be a pathway out of poverty. It is a very promising solution.”

Bradshaw, a VEP volunteer since that program’s arrival at UTC in 2012, has exchanged ideas with Morris many times. VEP’s success in Chattanooga makes Bradshaw optimistic about launching the new entrepreneurship initiative.

He has met with organizational heads and program directors within Chattanooga’s entrepreneurial ecosystem to pitch the poverty program.

“Frankly, it takes years to develop trust,” Bradshaw says, “so by partnering with programs that are already on the ground doing the work there with proven techniques of their own, we’ll be able to add to what they’ve been doing so effectively.”

The UPBI playbook includes boot camps that introduce tools, concepts and principles for launching a successful venture with little to no resources or background; mentoring; one-to-one student consulting; connections to community resources; and an introduction to microcredit. The latter involves small loans to help an individual become self-employed or grow a small business.

Bradshaw says UTC campus involvement is a reason for optimism about the program, including the number of faculty and staff involved with VEP who are interested in the new initiative.

Bringing students and entrepreneurs together to accomplish a social good while learning about entrepreneurship from UTC faculty—that’s an essential component.

“Through the utilization of University students as interns to help underrepresented business owners develop their products or services,” Bradshaw says, “we will be exposing these students to actual entrepreneurs facing obstacles and challenges that many entrepreneurs do not have. We’re adding the power of UTC’s intellectual capital and the energy and enthusiasm embodied in our students’ creativity and problem-solving abilities.”

Morris concurs, citing the success of the student consulting component of Notre Dame’s UPBI program. There, approximately 30 students help low-income and disadvantaged entrepreneurs in numerous ways, including with business registration and creating social media campaigns, websites and bookkeeping systems.

“The UTC student body is uniquely positioned to do this kind of work because many of the students are first-generation (college) students who themselves may come from difficult circumstances,” he says. “They’ve worked while they’re in school. They bring a practical perspective to things, and that suggests they will be good problem solvers.

“If you stick a student in a student incubator for six months to work on his own venture, he will not learn as much as spending one semester consulting to these poverty entrepreneurs—on the ground with real problems and with no resources.”

Frankly, it takes years to develop trust,” Bradshaw says, “so by partnering with programs that are already on the ground doing the work there with proven techniques of their own, we’ll be able to add to what they’ve been doing so effectively.

— Mike Bradshaw, Entrepreneur-in-Residence

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