The National Dialogue on Entrepreneurship highlighted North Carolina’s Institute for Rural Entrepreneurship this week. Entrepreneurial development has helped to transform many of North Carolina’s rural counties. Economic growth is no longer just found in the state’s metropolitan centers. Counties in North Carolina have been pushing for local business development for many years. We benefited from their support in the 1980s as we were first building our company. This program should be a model for other states looking to develop such programs. It is based on education, building support networks, and access to financing. We found they also were helpful in breaking through governmental bureaucracies that were not structured to support new business formation.
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