This model and tool were designed with historic urban areas in mind. But there are ideas you can apply to help you tap into other entrepreneurial ecosystems too.

HUB-IN toolkit

Hubs of Innovation and Entrepreneurship for the Transformation of Historic Urban Areas (HUB-IN) is a project to revitalise historic urban areas (HUAs) without destroying their historic character.

They have created a toolkit to support a 4-stage journey:

1. Understand the state of play
2. Prepare to set up your hub of innovation (HUB)
3. Set up and launch your HUB
4. Test and grow

Entrepreneurial ecosystem quick scan tool

As part of stage 2 (prepare to set up your HUB) they have created a tool to help you quickly scan the local entrepreneurial ecosystem. This can help you work out how you can support it.

The tool is based on their entrepreneurial ecosystem (EE) framework, which breaks down the EE into a range of ‘ingredients’ and ‘arrangements’ that help foster innovation in historic urban areas:

• heritage
• physical and digital infrastructure
• marketplace demand
• support organisations
• human resources
• knowledge
• leadership
• finance
• formal institutions
• urban culture
• entrepreneurial culture
• networks

Using the tool will help you:

• make use of existing strong relationships, and spot gaps where you need to make new relationships
• identify existing strengths of the entrepreneurial ecosystem, and what you can do to improve things
• find out how open people will be to getting involved with your HUB, and how they might want to work with you
• understand the role of 3 possible approaches to regeneration initiatives: public, entrepreneurial and community

Further source reading

• HUB-IN toolkit
• Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Quick Scan tool – this page explains the tool in more depth, and you can download a zipped folder containing the tool’s document