The Collective Wealth Building Research

A National Look at Community Entrepreneurship

Funded through a grant from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, Inclusive STL is a partnership between the Washington University’s Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation (SEI) Lab and WEPOWER.

This research looks at the emerging class of innovative approaches (falling under the umbrella category of “entrepreneurship-centered community wealth building models,” or “ECCWB models”) that appear to offer critical answers to questions about how to structure entrepreneurial activity and the future of work in ways that more effectively lead to shared prosperity.

The goals of this project are to:

1. Understand and document emerging entrepreneurship-centered community wealth building (ECCWB) models that appear to be structured in ways that make entrepreneurship more likely to effectively advance inclusive prosperity (by supporting and sustaining individuals, families, and communities)
2. Illustrate for civic leaders and wider communities (including entrepreneur support organizations, policymakers, funders and investors, and the public at large) the comparative advantages (as well as any drawbacks) of these ECCWB models when compared to conventional approaches to entrepreneurship (i.e. how they are restructuring entrepreneurial activity in ways that are designed to more effectively generate inclusive prosperity)
3. Accelerate the adoption of inclusive, entrepreneurship-centered models for community wealth building in systematically marginalized communities.