Black Entrepreneurship Knowledge Hub First Year Accomplishments
The Sprott School of Business celebrates the first year of active engagement of the Black Entrepreneurship Knowledge Hub (BEKH). In partnership with the Dream Legacy Foundation and its founder, Isaac Olowalafe, BEKH is the first-ever Knowledge Hub and largest community led, highly collaborative multidisciplinary endeavor for Sprott, which includes close to a hundred business partnerships and thirteen universities across Canada.
Co-Lead and Principal Investigator, Gerald Grant, Professor, Information Systems, and Andrea Pierce, Executive Director of BEKH spearhead BEKH and are strong advocates and truly passionate about the success of the Hub long-term and how it will reshape the social and business landscapes for Black communities across the country.
A critical pillar in the Black Entrepreneurship Program in Canada, BEKH serves as a collaborative, co-generated, and high-quality national data and knowledge platform that reflects the state of Black entrepreneurship in Canada. This large-scale endeavor is an incredible and critical contribution to Canada’s greater acceptance, support, and understanding of the challenges and gaps that Black entrepreneurs and the community face.
BEKH is unique in that the community initiates and prioritizes research areas that serve as the springboard for further development by academics and government agencies alike. As well, the Hub model is a sustainable ecosystem where researchers, community, government, and other valued contributors collaborate on research to increase access to capital and resources. Moreover, the active regional partnerships and network building (in partnership with Dream Legacy Foundation) includes socioeconomic change for intersectional groups including women, racial minorities, gender diverse, Indigenous, persons with disabilities, LGBTQ2S+, and other marginalized groups. It is truly a synergistic approach to research and learning.
“Through the creation of the Knowledge Hub and the supporting ecosystem, we are building Black entrepreneur capacity to synergistically contribute to the growth of the Canadian economy. What’s more, the Coronavirus pandemic has significantly changed the economic landscape for all Canadians, but particularly Black entrepreneurs and marginalized groups who have been disproportionately impacted. It is imperative, therefore, that we support and engage everyone in contributing to the growth of the economy in ways that strongly support these groups.”
– Andrea Pierce, Executive Director, BEKH, Sprott School of Business
BEKH had a momentous first year building capacity of the six Hubs across Canada—both in building teams and support to get the hubs functioning, as well as launch planning and community engagement meetings that foster a collaborative, multidisciplinary, inclusive group of entrepreneurs and academics to direct and prioritize research areas.
Moving into the next year, the Sprott Central Hub will continue to coordinate and align regional Hub research visions and foster co-creation of research ideas with community and academia. Moreover, BEKH is set to deliver large-scale qualitative and quantitative research, including the mapping project, which involves a broad partnership with Statistics Canada, Business Development Bank of Canada, Export Development Canada, and several academic institutions. The qualitative study will draw greatly on community networks and knowledge that aims to chart funding networks, support networks, and recognize gaps in access to support, education, and critical resources within Black and underrepresented communities. The ecosystem will ensure sustainable and continued support and knowledge mobilization tools and strategies that are valuable and practical for the Black community and Black entrepreneurs.
When we dismantle the systemic barriers marginalized groups face, we can rebuild a stronger community where every member can live and thrive as a collective. The BEKH platform is one major and critical step in this endeavor.
“Our shared vision is to facilitate and orchestrate structured community-led research collaborations anchored in regional hubs comprised of community and academic researchers, community organizations, and post-secondary universities and colleges. Our goal is that the coordinated network of regional hubs will generate actions and outputs that will inform communities’ advocacy and policymaking needs to support and sustain self-sufficient Black entrepreneurs and an ecosystem that fosters the health and well-being for communities from coast to coast to coast.”
– Gerald Grant, Professor, Information Systems, Sprott School of Business