Connecting Entrepreneurial Communities Conference held in Benton County, Missouri on September 19-23, 2023 was the third iteration of this conference. Previous CEC Conferences in 2021 and 2022 were held in Hannibal and Hermann, Missouri, respectively. This conference focuses on sharing real-life success stories of rural communities supporting entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial ecosystems. It includes information on the strategies those communities have deployed to support entrepreneurs; the tools that are available to help those efforts; and the broader economic and workforce trends that are impacting entrepreneurship locally and across the United States.
Seminar at the 2023 Connecting Entrepreneurial Communities Conference in Benton, Missouri.
The 2023 CEC Conference brought together 104 participants from 48 communities across four states to learn how the communities of Benton County – Warsaw, Cole Camp, and Lincoln – have built a robust entrepreneurial ecosystem that is supporting a variety of small businesses. The target audience for the Connecting Entrepreneurial Communities Conference is different, as this effort focuses on helping rural communities – and community leaders – build and support entrepreneurial ecosystems in their towns and regions.
This program is one of the first intentional efforts in Missouri to focus on rural entrepreneurship, with sessions designed to bridge the gap between the academy and practitioners on ways to support rural entrepreneurship. Attendees report that the conference includes a number of “tangible takeaways” that they are putting “into practice almost immediately in my community.”
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