Measuring iowa’s entrepreneurial ecosystem

The Iowa Innovation Dashboard is a comprehensive indicator of entrepreneurial activity in Iowa, compiling several vital metrics of entrepreneurial information into one dashboard to capture the pulse of Iowa's entrepreneurial and startup climate.

 

What IS the dashboard measuring?

The dashboard shows measurements of business activity, research, investment capital, and demographics regarding entrepreneurship in Iowa. The Partnership and Clay & Milk plan to update the dashboard twice a year, with plans to add new metrics in future iterations.

 

  • This section looks at several metrics surrounding business starts, including active businesses by density, business survival rate, total self-employment, and the rate of new entrepreneurs.

  • This section measures and tracks the fundraising history of Iowa startups, including venture capital rounds and state funding.

  • This section measures and tracks multiple research-related metrics, including the number of patents filed in the state, R&D expenditures, and research grants awarded.

  • This section measures and tracks demographic data of business ownership, including gender, race, and ethnicity.

    Note: This data is the hardest to find at the state level and cannot provide a complete picture, nor is it being measured by national agencies using inclusive identities for ownership (gender, race, ethnicity, LBGTQ+).

 

Why Entrepreneurship?

Entrepreneurs inherently solve problems that impact the communities we live in and the greater society.

They create value in many ways:

  • starting new businesses

  • establishing new jobs for our friends and neighbors

  • bringing innovative solutions to the market

  • turning hobbies into side hustles

  • creating our favorite shops on Main Street

  • making the products and services, we buy every day

Not to mention the long game—they employ most people as every large firm today has an origin story that started with an entrepreneur and an idea. 

 

purpose of the dashboard

It’s critical to measure entrepreneurship in Iowa for job creation, innovation, and the economy.

Understanding the rates and scale of new business activity, capital infusion, research and development, and the demographics of founders are all essential for those interested individuals and organizations who make choices that affect local policy and guide economic development. No single indicator can provide a complete picture of all types of entrepreneurship at any given time, so we’ve assembled data from several public and private datasets into four areas of interest that we believe will give the best insight into the current state of entrepreneurship and Iowa and allow the ability to see trends over time. 

The data on Iowa’s entrepreneurs and startups isn’t readily accessible until now. 

We believe Iowa’s entrepreneurial community is better when we have data and transparency around key indicators. Before starting this project, the data wasn’t easily accessible, and the question is often, “where does one start?”  There are several agencies and organizations that publicly or privately report metrics around entrepreneurship, yet they can be hard to find, let alone decipher meaning from at a state level.

The Iowa Innovation Dashboard is the starting point to bring together data to better understand entrepreneurship in Iowa. 

Special thanks to data contributors: BioConnect Iowa, Dentons Davis Brown, Iowa Economic Development Authority, and the Kauffman Foundation.

 

Help spread the word.

We need your help. The more people who know about this project and the data, the more we can start to have meaningful conversations that impact change. 

Share the Iowa Innovation Dashboard on Social. Let’s get loud!

 

let’s work together

We are looking for data partners!

The Iowa Innovation Dashboard is produced by Clay & Milk (a part of Gravitate Coworking) and the Greater Des Moines Partnership. The project pulls data twice a year from various sources and contributors.

We know that data is never done. It has to be updated, and new sources become available.

Are you or your organization a data rockstar? You’re in luck! We are looking for partnerships with local, state, and national stakeholders. 

Please reach out to Diana Wright at dwright@dsmpartnership.com to get involved.