One of the top priorities of the ESP group is the creation of a strategy to guide Cape Breton’s efforts in the development and support of entrepreneurship.  Our advisory team has encouraged those at work on our strategy to:

• Provide recommendations to improve the entrepreneurship culture
• Review entrepreneurship supports and identify overlaps and gaps
• Outline ways to insert entrepreneurship education in the public education system
• Suggest tactics to increase the number of business start-ups
• Identify best practices from jurisdictions where growth in entrepreneurship occurred
• Outline ways to funnel entrepreneurial ideas into commercial applications

What becomes apparent is the need to know more, in order to develop as clear a picture as possible of Cape Breton’s entrepreneurial landscape.  The points raised and noted to date in the first draft of the entrepreneurship strategy have raised the authors’ awareness of the need for more information.  This is where you come in.  With a view to helping map the supports and gaps in the system as well as the roadblocks, and to give appropriate weight to the concerns and issues raised to date, it’s been decided to create a survey.  You are invited to complete it.  The information will help to create the best possible strategy to support entrepreneurship in Cape Breton.

The online survey has been uploaded to Fluid Surveys for you to complete and submit at your earliest convenience. It doesn’t assume that you are an entrepreneur but asks where you fit in the “system.”  The multiple choice format invites you to list top challenges and goals.  It should take no more than ten minutes to complete.

The results will inform a strategy for the promotion and support of entrepreneurship to be unveiled next year.  Try not to think of it as a document or report but a map which we may follow to a new way of thinking about the creation of jobs and business in Cape Breton.  It’s about time.