Second-stage businesses benefit from PeerSpectives

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Second-stage businesses have high growth potential, but second-stage business owners function uniquely, somewhere in the land between startups and mature corporations. The Wisconsin Small Business Development Center worked with the Edward Lowe Foundation to develop what is now called Wisconsin PeerSpectives Network: Peer-to-Peer Learning for Entrepreneurs.

The network, which began about a year ago, is a series of roundtables for businesses in the second stage of growth.

Researchers report that businesses move through common stages of growth.

Second-stagers by nature believe their companies are unique and don't easily fit into specific growth cycles or business development categories.

Peer learning, in the broadest terms, simply means learning from others who share similar responsibilities, goals, problems and opportunities.

In the context of PeerSpectives, peer learning means gaining knowledge and insight through interaction with other second-stage business owners, CEOs and presidents.

As they gain experience in operating a growing company, many entrepreneurs discover the value of such interaction: the opportunity to share experiences, to solve problems, to think through opportunities and to give � and accept � a special kind of support they can find nowhere else.

The best peer-learning interactions occur not as chance meetings at social events or over occasional breakfasts or lunches, but as part of a regular, ongoing, facilitated process of interaction among participants in roundtables. The most effective groups follow a protocol that enables each member and the group to make the most productive use of their time.

By gathering in small groups in a roundtable setting, entrepreneurs get benefits from each other: relevant knowledge and experience, objective input, accelerated learning and the perspective needed for better decision-making.

The roundtables provide a valuable opportunity for owners, CEOs and presidents to tap into the collective wisdom of their peers on topics such as finance, employee relations, legal compliance, marketing and advertising, accessing new markets, production and personal isolation. Group members are committed to confidentiality, sharing, accountability and dispassionate analysis.

The peer groups are composed of eight to 12 noncompeting business owners who gather for confidential sharing of experiences and challenges about 10 times over a 12-month period.

Each roundtable is led by a facilitator trained by the foundation.

In general, a company is considered second-stage if it is privately held, past the startup stage, facing issues of growth rather than survival, transitioning from an entrepreneurial to a professional management style, and generating between $750,000 and $50 million in annual revenue or has that range of working capital in place.

Full tuition is $1,500 for 12 months, but the Governor's PeerSpective Scholarship Pro-gram pays 75 percent of the cost of the first year of tuition. Entrepreneurs are expected to cover the full cost of participation in subsequent years.

There may be many ways to define a high-growth firm, but most people agree that this is where the magic happens for Wisconsin's economy.

For more information, call 800-940-7232 or e-mail perspectives@uwex.edu.