The mission of Innovation Works (IW) is to reduce Baltimore’s neighborhood and racial wealth divide by teaching and accompanying members of disinvested communities to build and own successful social enterprises that create sustainable neighborhood economies and result in better family living, more resilient communities, and a safer, more vibrant city.
Whereas traditional workforce development initiatives focus on training individuals for specific jobs, IW’s approach leverages social entrepreneurship as a catalyst for job creation, wage growth, and long-term economic stability. IW engages with minority and women entrepreneurs–two demographics ignored by recent entrepreneurship and economic growth activities that generally serve a non-diverse population of well-educated, white, male entrepreneurs–by engaging them in its Enterprise Pipeline, a five-stage, idea-to-scale social enterprise development program. IW not only works with social enterprises to reduce the number of false starts and high failure rates of entrepreneurship ventures, but also provides systemic, continued support and retention efforts to help them learn, grow, scale, and stay in Baltimore to help build thriving communities.