Entrepreneurial Resilience Strategy

Description

Module 8: January 7, 2022
Entrepreneurial Resilience Strategy
Instructor: Dr. Charles (Mel) Gray, University of St. Thomas

Crises inevitably cause dislocations in the economy, which may create new opportunities as well as problems. In a crisis, organizations find new ways of doing things, which is the essence of entrepreneurship. For example, entrepreneurial leaders find alternative ways of delivering existing services, they find new services and markets within the framework of their existing missions, they find new ways of exploiting underutilized assets to produce new sources of net income, and they even find ways to stretch and adapt their missions. For example, in the COVID-19 crisis, churches and schools have opened their physical plants to sheltering the homeless and temporarily expanding hospital capacity, while JCCs have expanded their child day care programs to include instruction for students whose parents must work and cannot assist them with online learning at home. This module will explore how nonprofits can develop an entrepreneurial mindset, and how they can assess their competitive advantages in new markets and for new products and services, including investment in innovation, as a way of making their organizations more resilient. The module will also consider how nonprofits can guard against mission creep as they become more resilient.