C•CUBE

Conversations for Colleges and Universities in Building Ecosystems

A toolkit with strategies, resources, and connections to help higher education play a supporting role in building thriving entrepreneurial ecosystems.

New to ecosystem building?

C•CUBE Logo and circle graphic representing peer learning roundtable.

Now available: New Professional Development Opportunity for Ecosystem Builders

C•CUBE Peer Learning Roundtables

Venn Collaborative, one of the developers of C•CUBE, is offering an 8-week program to help you engage your entrepreneurship ecosystem and build stronger collaborations. The C•CUBE Peer Learning Roundtables provide higher education stakeholders and their ecosystem partners practical ways to apply C•CUBE strategies and tools to ecosystem building, as well as the opportunity to learn from others doing this work in institutions and ecosystems across the country.

The Winter Roundtable starts January 16, 2025 and registration is now open.

Toolkit Audiences

Higher Education and its Stakeholders

Why Colleges and Universities?

Let’s be clear: colleges and universities don’t build ecosystems. But they can play a tremendous role in supporting ecosystem building by making knowledge and talent assets available, by convening ecosystem builders and other stakeholders, and simply by using their voice to lift up entrepreneurs, ecosystem builders, and ecosystem support organizations.

Colleges and universities are a key part of their communities—they help fuel innovation, supply talent, and create great places to live and work. C•CUBE helps higher education professionals and their partners build on this capacity. The toolkit helps institutions understand the potential they have to convene and support the network of organizations and individuals in the community—the ecosystem—and support in setting the stage for stronger economic growth and flourishing regions.

This toolkit is primarily intended for the higher education community, across all types of colleges and universities, and all relevant roles and responsibilities within institutions.

Why Conversations?

The toolkit is designed to help you initiate and sustain meaningful conversations about ecosystem-building challenges. Here is a perspective from the Kauffman Foundation’s Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Playbook that we think describes well why conversations are at the heart of C•CUBE:

“The primary focus of an entrepreneurial ecosystem is to move knowledge and resources from the people who have it to the entrepreneurs who need it, and much of that transference happens through conversations with people. It is also in these conversations that we inspire possibility and action.”

Additionally, other ecosystem stakeholders may find the resources and tools available here helpful in their ecosystem building efforts, and in building connections with local colleges and universities

Joining the C•CUBE Community

Entrepreneurial ecosystem building is at its heart conversations–making the connections that bring together people and that create the foundation for relationships that help ecosystems flourish. The CCUBE community, a LinkedIn Group, brings together higher education professionals, ecosystem builders, and their partners in a place to share experiences, ask questions, build practices together, and contribute to the field—and to CCUBE toolkit content—on an ongoing basis. Please join us there and add your voice.