| dc.description.abstract | NCGrowth is a non-profit economic development organization in North Carolina whose mission is to create job opportunities that help stimulate the state’s economy, which is essential to the success of small businesses and local under-resourced communities. NCGrowth works in partnership with the United States Economic Development Administration (E.D.A.) to remedy significant economic threats in North Carolina and the coastal region of South Carolina. NCGrowth wants to diffuse its ideas, practices, and solutions to expand impact without growing to reach more communities in need. In this study, we examine: (1) how NCGrowth currently diffuses their ideas, practices, and solutions, and (2) how they currently leverage existing resources to expand their impact. The conceptual frameworks used for inquiring about scaling out NCGrowths practices phenomenon include Rogers’ (1995) Diffusion of Innovation theory and scaling literature (scaling deep, scaling up, and scaling out). The study consists of exploratory research and mixed methods design. The data collected includes a combination of a qualitative (observations, individual interviews, focus groups) and quantitative (business development and economic development client satisfaction surveys and student analyst satisfaction surveys) review of NCGrowth’s documents. | en_US |
