The Census Open Innovation Labs invites you to share your expertise with The Opportunity Project (TOP) participants, who are helping to improve minority businesses’ access to capital and small businesses’ potential to thrive in a digital economy.
Alongside Orange Sparkle Ball, a cross-industry innovation agency and a long-time partner of TOP, we'll co-host a participatory bilingual Product Roadmap and Sustainability Workshop to support tech solutions responding to these challenges.
Social capital is about the value of social networks, bonding similar people and bridging between diverse people, with norms of reciprocity. Being connected to others, builds trust, shared resources, and collective action. Asset mapping is a vehicle to identify, discover, and connect with ecosystems to help deploy your tool and increase adoption.
Effective milestones are an important part of the product development and deployment process, especially in today’s era of team-based sprints. They act as key integration points. To do this effectively, a team must understand both the tasks, and sequence of tasks within each functional discipline, for reaching deployment. This allows you to sync up work across those functions & activities.
WHY THIS PROBLEM IS IMPORTANT:
Minority owned businesses are critical to our national and local economies, and represent approximately 18% of all U.S. businesses and more than 2.2 million jobs. Yet these businesses face difficulties when accessing capital. The 2021 Small Business Credit Survey found that Black-owned firms that applied for traditional forms of financing were least likely to receive all of the financing they sought – 40% of white-owned firms received all of the financing they sought, compared to 31% of asian-owned firms, 20% of Hispanic-owned, and only 13% of black-owned firms. This trend persists even among firms with good credit scores. One key reason for the lack of bank financing for Minority Business Enterprises (MBEs) is lower credit, lower net worth, and lack of assets, and without alternative capital options, businesses either reduce operational capacity or go out of business. Without the ability to access needed capital, minority-owned businesses often find themselves struggling to grow or gain traction in their selected industry, which stunt job creation, slos down local economies, and further increases the earnings gap in the United States.
Read the full Problem Statement →
Image courtesy of business.nv.gov
WHY THIS PROBLEM IS IMPORTANT:
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, many small businesses have struggled to stay afloat. As of May 2021, the number of U.S. small businesses that were open had decreased by 33.8% compared to January 2020. Businesses that remained open have faced reduced revenue and increased expenses amidst new operational health and safety restrictions; while much of the economy also transitioned online. For a small business owner to survive in a digitally connected world, they must be able to take on digital transformation as part of their competitive business strategy. For example, while many businesses remain brick-and-mortar only 29% of small businesses in Florida report benefiting from online sales. Given these challenges, economic recovery will not be straightforward or equitable for smaller- scale operations. Digital transformation is critical for small businesses to better understand their target audiences and measure business growth and success. With 60% of net new job gains in Florida since 2012 having come from companies with less than 100 employees, small businesses play a critical role in the state's economy.
Read the full Problem Statement →
Image courtesy of kairifm.com