This research examines the evolution of Nebraska’s entrepreneurial ecosystem from 2021 to 2025, revealing a landscape marked by both emerging opportunities and persistent structural barriers. The study tracks changes in business creation, self-employment, capital access, early-stage support programs, and research and development investment, as well as shifts across key industry sectors. While Nebraska has made notable progress — particularly in startup support and capital availability — overall growth remains modest, innovation is narrowly concentrated, and significant gaps persist in rural access, university–industry partnerships, and statewide connectivity. The research offers evidence-based insights on strengthening entrepreneurship to support inclusive, community-driven development across Nebraska.
This session presents survey-based findings from four rural communities on residents' perceptions of the usability of local systems that support entrepreneurship. The presentation focuses on differences between resource availability and ease of use. It introduces a set of measures that practitioners can apply to better understand how community support for entrepreneurs functions from the user perspective.
From 2021-2025, University of Wisconsin-Madison Extension led a cross-sector collaborative to solve a multi-part problem in Wisconsin: inequities in both entrepreneurship and incarceration, alongside high recidivism. Responding with entrepreneurship education for justice-impacted state residents, Extension educators followed the same steps their participants were learning to grow the program. This paper describes the effort through typical Extension program development steps as well as entrepreneurial language. Comparing the two shows that common Extension skills are well suited to social entrepreneurship, which creates a community benefit from new funding and partners. It ends with a discussion of lessons learned and suggestions for trying again.
