Workshop: Culturally Relevant Enterprise Development (CRED) for Tribal Colleges Listen and Learn

Arizona State University, Scottsdale AZ

Investigators

Abstract

We propose a "listen and learn" workshop to facilitate partnerships between NSF and Native American/Alaska Native (NA/AN) communities in the US to develop an innovation and STEM/STEAM-based entrepreneurship curriculum and incubator program. The goals are to collect, understand, and document best practices among existing entrepreneurship incubator programs in NA/AN communities as well as envision what an entrepreneurship incubator program could look like. Workshop participants will come away with knowledge of community needs, existing, existing successful models for NA/AN entrepreneurship programs, NSF entrepreneurship, lean launchpad, and the business model canvas; skills including: Customer discovery process; STEM, social, and community-based culturally-relevant entrepreneurship; positive attitudes around defining individual entrepreneurial mindsets and imagining a future NA/AN entrepreneurship incubator program. The activity will help advance understanding of best practices among existing entrepreneurship incubator programs in NA/AN communities and to help develop a vision for what an NSF-sponsored program for NA/AN STEM entrepreneurs could look like. It will lay a ground work for a pilot cohort of NA/AN entrepreneurs to participate in a culturally relevant I-Corps variant, Culturally Relevant Enterprise Development (CRED) program that could ultimately be expanded to other communities. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.