Pine Bluff Entrepreneurship Collaborative
Breakfast with Legislators
February 15, 2007, 7:30 a.m.
State Capital

We thank you for this opportunity to provide to you some information on an initiative we in Pine Bluff are very excited about. We hope after this morning’s presentation you too will share our enthusiasm.

Two-thirds of all jobs created in Jefferson County are created through small businesses. Though they are only one component of many needed to promote development in Pine Bluff, small businesses are nonetheless crucial to our city’s future. A number of organizations in Pine Bluff have known this for a long time and have done what they can to foster a suitable environment for small businesses.

A Federal Reserve Community Roundtable on Entrepreneurship held in Pine Bluff, however, helped some of those same organizations come to the realization that their efforts, independent of others’, were not as effective as they could be.

In recognition of that fact, those organizations have come together to form the Pine Bluff Entrepreneurship Collaborative. The collaborative represents a concerted effort by public, private and non-profit agencies, to provide knowledge, resources and other support to proposed, new and existing businesses in Pine Bluff and surrounding areas. In essence, the collaborative’s partners intend to create an entrepreneurial city from the inside-out.

The collaborative is certain it can directly and indirectly affect a number of positive changes in our city as it becomes that entrepreneurial city. Its activities will have far reaching results for Pine Bluff and Jefferson County.

There will be more opportunities in our area that will make staying in Pine Bluff an attractive proposition for the best and brightest students at our higher education institutes – assets we are now losing to other cities and states.

People will want to move to, rather than from, Pine Bluff. More homes and commercial structures will be built, bought and utilized.

And, nothing sustains success like success. So the creation of this entrepreneurial environment will help us establish a broader environment attractive to larger businesses and industries that might not have given Pine Bluff a second glance before. Pine Bluff’s image will be improved, both externally and also internally.

All this economic activity will, of course, improve Pine Bluff’s economic base, providing the resources local governments in the area require to meet the ever increasing need for services and to create a safer, successful and self-respecting community.

I thank you for your time and attention this morning. I know you will give the collaborative and its goals your every consideration and hope you will participate to any extent that you are able.

I will now turn it over to my colleagues here to give you a more detailed look at the Pine Bluff Entrepreneurship Collaborative.