Alan: We’re part of the University of Missouri Extension system. Of course, every state has an extension, but not every state has a focus on economic development at a similar scale to ours in Missouri. Economic development is our goal, providing information to extension folks, and, of course, the public on economic topics. We noticed Venture Forward’s online business data around the pandemic time when a lot of this information was gaining importance. Our Extension runs most Small Business Development Centers in Missouri, so we have a lot of counselors who advise small businesses on entrepreneurship issues and how to grow their operations. When the pandemic struck, we were looking for any kind of data that we could use to understand what might be happening with online commerce. The Venture Forward data was a new set of information that we’d never had before and it was at county-level, which is critical because many folks want to know what’s happening in their area. We started by just doing briefs using information like Venture Forward’s Microbusiness Activity Index and Microbusiness Density.  
 
We thought it was important enough to put it into a data visualization that could look at things over time. Importantly, Venture Forward already normalize the data by dividing it by population. Big cities are going to have more than small towns, but when you control for that, do metros generally do better than non-metros? Because, in Extension, we are often interested in rural development challenges as smaller communities can lack timely business data. So, when we talked about what we were going to visualize, we made that non-metro/metro distinction so that we could compare places and see if there were differences.  
 
That was the reason we developed the dashboard: to take Venture Forward data, which is already easy to understand, and put it on a dashboard so we can look at it over time.  
 
Natalia: We collected the data and we decided to divide it up by metro versus non-metro areas. We also wanted to divide these counties by economic development type, like agriculture and manufacturing, to see how it could impact density.  
 
Alan: That’s the project that we just completed.  We combined USDA economic type information, which includes six categories, with the Venture Forward density data. We didn’t know what to expect, but it seemed interesting because we see population trends that are impacted by economic types.

Alan: Yes. In July we came out with a brief on 2020-2023 population trends in Missouri, but there’re parallels in the U.S. For example, our city cores, like St Louis City and Jackson County, which is Kansas City, had out migration but suburban and adjacent non-metro counties gained population. It reflects the hybrid work reality, of the cheaper housing options on the outskirts of metros and not having to be at the office five days a week. We saw what was happening nationally also occur here.  
 
The other trend that was interesting was looking at county economic types, such as recreation. Many states, whether it’s the beaches along South Carolina or lakes in Missouri, had recreational places that lit up in terms of population gains, even though they’re far away from bigger metros. Their broadband is fine and often they’re retirement meccas. For example in Missouri, people from Kansas City and St. Louis often vacation at the Lake of the Ozarks. If they have remote work options, they can say ‘I’m going to live there year-round’, so recreation-based economies are capturing this population shift.  
To complement the dashboard, we also developed a Microbusiness density research brief, published this month, that describes how Missouri counties compare to similar U.S. places.

Alan: Yeah. Access to capital is nothing new, but there are questions of “how do you do this?” At least doing something that’s less capital intensive to start, such as a microbusiness, let’s them learn the basics of marketing and running a business.

Alan: We don’t have solid numbers to really tell us at this time, but I think that’s got to be the case. Heck, two of my kids already sell stuff online. I think the younger generation is definitely more digitally savvy, and just more comfortable in that space. When thinking about rural areas, there are generally fewer younger folks relative to other places, and maybe less industry diversity. Helping existing rural businesses that aren’t online with technology can be a challenge, especially with older entrepreneurs. I think it’s going to get better, obviously, year after year with more learning, but it’s just not there yet. I think a lot of places are still missing out.

Natalia: I think it’s interesting to use because you find different trends. You can compare different counties by metro and non-metro and it’s useful to make decisions like how to develop microbusiness activity. Using this dashboard, we can compare different years and different states. It can help explain why microbusiness open their activity in certain states and why do they prefer it there?