IASourceLink Blog

Government contracting is a byzantine business—a long and plodding trek through a jungle filled with complicated regulation, documentation, and new marketing challenges. Sound impossible? It’s not. But no smart explorer launches a trip through the jungle without finding a good guide. CIRAS exists to serve as that guide for Iowa businesses. Many Iowa businesses have known this for a long time.

Family businesses are unique, and due to the uniqueness it leaves room for lack of connectedness with other businesses in the community who are not family based. Family businesses naturally have a more difficult experience setting long term goals, and creating a healthy work life balance in the family’s life. Whether you are currently struggling to create a family dynamic within your business, or if you feel your business is confident within functioning as family business, participating in the UNI Family Business Forum is for YOU. We have designed this forum to reflect the needs of Iowa family business owners, through our main focus of connection.

Mike Crum, who for the last five years has led the Office of Economic Development and Industry Relations (EDIR), stepped down at the end of [June 2018]. In his role [vice president for economic development and business engagement], Crum oversaw six key economic development units and a number of affiliated programs that provide to Iowa State’s clients and partners integrated business, technical, entrepreneurial support, and educational services.

If you’re ready to take your business to the next level but unsure of the best path to future growth, the Entrepreneurial Management Institute could be a great place to build your roadmap. EMI is a partnership between the Tippie College of Business and the John Pappajohn Entrepreneurial Center (Iowa JPEC) that provides affordable consulting services by University of Iowa students to businesses and startups across Iowa.

Professional development, networking events, summits, conferences, peer learning...the list can go on forever. Invitations to these type of events are EVERYWHERE!! I see them all over social media, email, my office mailbox, even the bulletin boards at offices and coffee shops around town. With so many of them happening, I’m assuming they must be fairly well attended but the real question is….are they worth it?

When it comes to electric fencing insulation, Insulights is the name to know in Iowa. The company founder, Bill Brown recently won first place in the John Pappajohn pitch competition with his company Insulights at Entrefest in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. I had the pleasure of having a brief conversation about how his company started, what it was like to get the resources he needed to have starting a company in Iowa, and his plans for the company's next steps.

Advance Iowa, a program hosted on University of Northern Iowa’s campus, is launching a Family Business Forum Breakfast Series Fall 2018. This series is designed to bring families together to navigate topics such as Human Resources and next generation planning, topics that are imperative to owning and operating a successful family business for years to come.

The Iowa Business Concierge on IASourcelink is the information conduit for business owners and resource partners. With access to over a dozen databases and University of Northern Iowa resources the ‘BC’ makes getting information for your business a breeze. From prospect lists, demographics, and consumer spending reports the information available can help any size business. The service is available at no-cost on IASourcelink.com and you can call, email or submit a form on the website.

“If you build it, they will come.” That advice may have worked out for fictional Iowa corn farmer Ray Kinsella when he built his Field of Dreams. But Amy Kuhlers, real-life builder of entrepreneurial ecosystems, knew early on that she’d have to actively recruit the players for Iowa’s field of dreams—a vibrant resource network for entrepreneurs.

Hello, this is Debi Durham, Director of the Iowa Economic Development Authority. We recently hit an exciting milestone anniversary – IASourceLink has turned five! When the program was first launched late in 2012, we could only anticipate what this small business resource might provide to business owners, resource providers and aspiring entrepreneurs. Until that time, there had been no Iowa-centric place to find information on starting and growing a business. Would-be entrepreneurs turned to search engines for answers relying on the information they found whether it was accurate and credible or not.