NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — The Heartland Together project in Reno County is continuing forward, according to Jackson Swearer of StartUp Hutch.
"We're in the middle of the experiment phase of that process," Swearer said. " Heartland Together is a program being brought to Reno County by the Kansas Leadership Center out of Wichita and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, which is one of the larger regional private foundations that funds entrepreneurship work. The real goal of that program across four communities across the heartland region of the country, which includes Reno County, is to try to expand entrepreneurship ecosystems. We won an award from NetWork Kansas for our entrepreneurship ecosystem cultivation. They were looking to our community as a place where we could really try to level that up."
There was a flagship experience in November that prompted some new ideas that are being tried now.
"Out of that came seven groups of people who are all trying different sort of small experiments," Swearer said. "One group designed and is implementing a peer coaching process for entrepreneurs, to try to get folks together to learn from each other. Another group put together and plans to distribute QR codes to try to direct people to different entrepreneurial resources. Those are just a couple of ideas."
Some limited grant funding from the Kauffman Foundation is helping with these experiments.
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