Jatinangor Creative Hub Ecosystem: An Evidence-based stageEstablishment Stage Model of the New Creative Entrepreneur

Abstraksi

Nowadays, the challenge of entrepreneurship development is not only in how to create them, but also in how to make aggressive progress towards a higher level of competency, independence, and its capability in sustaining its growth. In the process of its creating and growing, small entrepreneurs, especially technology-based entrepreneurs (technopreneurship), requires an environment or ecosystem as an introductory and fostering media place in their initial and fundamental stage of entrepreneurship. The ecosystem model described below is the empirical experience of Universitas Padjadjaran by generating entrepreneurial ecosystem through Forum Kreatif Jatinangor (Jatinangor Creative Forum) and The Local Enablers Community. These two community entities were formed based on the plan to generate various new businesses with broad impact for the community and other stakeholders in order to support the country’s economic development. The established ecosystem was the result of iterations of activation model forms involving multiple stakeholders. From 2012 to 2018 time period, small entrepreneurs in Jatinangor region, West Java Province, were rapidly growing. Jatinangor Creative Hub was the new creative entrepreneur ecosystem, that was formed to activate the development and growth of these small entrepreneurs. The ecosystem was formed in the early stages from the seeding until the growth of the great movement of global entrepreneurship. The research methodology was conducted by reviewing their previous experiences, the ecosystem was then identifying various developments and observing the 3 main development stages of 78 community member small entrepreneurs and involving other parties such as experts, mentors, and government to form ecosystem model. This empirical model consists of three stages of the entrepreneurial generation as follows, Stage I: The Initiation of Generating Entrepreneurship Interests, stage II: Entrepreneurial Growth and stage III: The Consolidation and Acceleration of Business. The level of mastery of entrepreneurship is also described in this model from growing the interest in making the ability to perform an entrepreneurial action. At each stage, there are also various types of appropriate facilities whose supervisions are designed to meet their parameters of goals. Every stage should be formed and used as a systematic facility to create a good ecosystem to produce many more creative entrepreneurs who have good knowledge and skill so that the number of entrepreneurship will increase. stage I as the introductory stage for introducing, growing and generating interest, by conducting Forum Kreatif Jatinangor (Jatinangor Creative Forum) which regularly hold weekly meetings to foster interest in entrepreneurship in Education Area of Jatinangor by UNPAD. The success of this forum was shown by spawning variety of new potential entrepreneurs in three years since its inception. The weekly meeting was an important factor to be consistently held although attended by enthusiasts whose number fluctuates. The meeting was held about 1-2 hour by presenting material such as sharing the experience and ideas from each member. The progress of this stage can be measured by the number of involvement and the impact of the activities, and the increase of the interest to start entrepreneurial activities. Entrepreneurship fostering which was systematically done can have an impact on increasing the quality and quantity of entrepreneurial produced. stage II was done by pursuing programs so that the grown interest can immediately start transforming to a business plan for the real action in order to finally produce various entrepreneurs. The programs such as business introduction, growth, and consolidation. At the stage of growing entrepreneurship, a community was established and filled by a group of individuals who have successfully select and start their business from a small stage. The community that was initiated in this stage was expected to accompany the daily activities of the novice entrepreneurs in pursuing the interest until getting their business model. The community was called “The Local Enablers” which was grown into the networking community and become key partners along community members. A Meeting was regularly held with greater frequency every week to strengthen business and find a variety of ideas and solutions as needed by sharing various knowledge skills, and resources, collaborating and also networking ongoing activities. The success of this community was shown by the increase of income and profits, and positive impact on society through a variety of awards and winners from local to international level in the past two years since its inception. Moreover, such an ecosystem can be linked with Creative Forum, Other business communities and academic institutions. Stage III in strengthening the novice entrepreneur was conducted by incubation. This incubation can be done independently or in cooperation with other institutions that correspond to the business focus and platform of novice entrepreneurs. The novice entrepreneurs in this consolidation and acceleration stage were the result of curation process which was done at previous stages to determine which businesses may be accelerated. Incubation can be carried out in some periods with the one-to-three-week meeting. assistance and monitoring period are carried out for six months, in which the materials delivered are led to the mastery and exploration of knowledge and skills. Ecosystems involved in this stage are Business Incubator, Business Community, and still related to the Creative Forum to hold knowledge sharing. The business incubators from UNPAD and other institutions such as Innotek, Pananyaan and non-governmental international institutions such as Unlimited Indonesia, the British Council and other parties who have high competence in business incubation as the example of business incubators which was cooperating with “The Local Enablers” community. The success of this incubating stage was indicated by the increasing skills, validation of business and the level of acceleration of business and business impact for the broader environment.