Community Support
Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship is Vital
Stark startups create dramatic business development opportunities.
Entrepreneurial startups are a strong indicator of a vibrant economy. To support our fledgling businesses, Strengthening Stark is working to create a pathway to bankability. With support from local financial institutions, nonprofits, and philanthropic organizations, we’ve worked to provide microloans and are creating a source of loan funding to accelerate the growth of our next generation of employers.
Innovation District HQ serves as the central hub of the Canton Innovation District — a 12-block neighborhood within downtown Canton designed to attract and facilitate the growth of technology-oriented businesses in Stark County. Our partnership with JumpStart provides support to unlock the full potential of diverse and ambitious entrepreneurs that support our economic transformation goals in Stark County.
Supporting Business Development Opportunities
“The engine for economic growth.”
An MIT publication referred to entrepreneurship as an “engine for economic growth” because it creates jobs, drives innovation and technological progress, fosters market competition, and transfers knowledge.
An average of over four million businesses start each year, with these startups creating 3 million jobs in its initial year and employing 2.6 million five years later. It’s now believed that entrepreneurial firms are responsible for net job growth in the United States.
Strengthening Stark encourages and supports entrepreneurial advancement through a combination of financing, real estate, and foreign trade zone programs. Tactics to facilitate capital investment and job creation include municipal and facility bonds, capital investment, tax-exempt recovery zones, bond structures and structured debt, grants, and other stimulus programs.
We support business development opportunities by managing foreign trade zones (FTZs) within Stark County; easing real estate acquisition and development; creating a funding infrastructure; and promoting services and facilities that grow economic development.
The Future is Entrepreneural
Strategies to grow business development opportunities.
Strengthening Stark is about the future, not the past; and that future is about growth through the pursuit of more and better business development opportunities by expanding entrepreneurial support.
Strategies that promote the entrepreneurial spirit are based on understanding the distinct types of entrepreneurial firms, their unique needs, impact, and likely growth trajectories. Examples include:
- Improving access to capital (e.g., equity, venture capital, and microcredit)
- Decreasing startup costs (e.g., tax incentives for R&D investments, property tax reductions, sales tax rebates, subsidies for targeted industries, and patent policies)
- Easing access to places, facilities, technology, and human capital
- Employing legal protection for property rights, tax policy, and regulation to favor entrepreneurial activity
- Creating entrepreneurial development programs such as technical, financial, and legal assistance, together with management training and education on regulatory compliance
- Connecting entrepreneurs to capital, technical expertise, and other non-financial opportunities
- Simplifying the permitting process and reduce administrative barriers for new businesses
- Spotlighting and promoting our region’s strengths with local business directories