How Modern Chatbots Can Shape The World of Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Building

This isn't your parents' chatbot.

Gone are the days of clunky, impersonal, robotic chatbots that left users frustrated and disengaged. In less than six months, public AI-enabled chatbot technology took a logarithmic leap forward - and it spread like wildfire.

Open AI went public with ChatGPT just a few days after last Thanksgiving on November 30th, 2022. It gained one miller users within a week of its launch and crossed the 100 million users milestone in January 2023 - making it the fastest growing consumer app of all-time.

Today's chatbots are powered by advanced natural language processing (NLP) algorithms that allow them to understand and respond to users in a way that feels actually useful and human-like.

How human-like?

I decided to ask ChatGPT about its origin story to get an unbiased opinion and here it what it had to say:

That last sentence stands out.

My development is a testament to the incredible advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) that are helping to shape our world and revolutionize the way we interact with technology.

AI and ML advances already have and are going to continue to shape our world in all sectors, and that is especially true in the field of entrepreneurial ecosystem building.

As an entrepreneurial ecosystem builder, you know how important it is to provide the resources and support entrepreneurs need to succeed. With AI and machine learning advancements shaping the world in all sectors, it's clear that chatbots can revolutionize the way entrepreneurs interact with technology. So how can a chatbot like ChatGPT shape the world of entrepreneurial ecosystem building? The possibilities are nearly endless.

First, here are some ways you can use a tool like ChatGPT to make day-to-day tasks a little easier starting today:

Answering Frequently Asked Questions

You can train ChatGPT on a knowledge base of common questions and answers to help entrepreneurs quickly and accurately find the information they need. This saves you time from answering repetitive questions and helps entrepreneurs get the information they need without delay.

Streamlining Content Creation

As an ecosystem builder, you (or someone you work with) will likely produce a lot of content, such as blog posts, newsletters, and reports. ChatGPT can assist with this by generating high-quality content based on your prompt. For example, you can provide ChatGPT with a topic or key message, and it can create a well-written article or summary based on that input. While not 100% perfect, it can spark your creativity with some new ideas or provide a solid template to work from.

Researching Industry Trends

Entrepreneurial ecosystem builders need to stay up-to-date on the latest trends and developments in various industries to better serve their local ecosystem. Chatbots like ChatGPT can assist with this by conducting research and analysis on industry trends, providing you with valuable insights that can inform your decision-making.

As powerful as ChatGPT is right off the shelf, it does have some limitations. It doesn't allow you to provide curated, up-to-date data (current models don't have access to any data beyond 2021) nor can you gather insights on what your ecosystem is searching for (and finding).

That's why the EcoMap team is proud to have launched EcoBot: the first chatbot trained to respond with information specific to your community, organization, or audience.

How Does EcoBot Differ From ChatGPT?

EcoBot is trained on data about the resources & organizations within your  ecosystem, as well as expertly-curated content about business operations and entrepreneur support strategies, to create a custom, intelligent chatbot tailored to your community. ChatGPT provides great synthesis from every available web resource, but the responses can not be trained or tailored to a specific ecosystem.

Customized for Your Community

We know how important it is to have a brand that people can identify with and trust. That's why EcoBot is fully white-labeled - meaning you can change the name, color, description, and even personality of your EcoBot to match your organization or ecosystem. In addition, a white-labeled chatbot platform can also provide you with the flexibility to make changes and updates as needed, without relying on the platform provider. This means you can customize the chatbot to meet your evolving business needs, without the added cost and time of hiring developers to build a custom solution from scratch.

Generating Actual Ecosystem Insights

As an ecosystem builder, the EcoBot data can provide you with valuable insights into how users are interacting with the chatbot, which in turn can help you identify areas of improvement for the ecosystem as a whole. For example, if you notice that a large number of users are asking similar questions or encountering similar problems, you can use that information to create new resources or tools to address those issues. Furthermore, by analyzing the usage patterns of different user segments, you can gain insights into the needs and behaviors of specific groups within the ecosystem.

Given their rapid proliferation over the last couple months, it is becoming clear that the chatbot revolution is coming for all sectors - including economic development. But this shouldn't feel foreboding. It's an opportunity to incorporate this technology in order to make life easier for both the economic development professionals and the entrepreneurs that depend on them for these types of resources.

If you want to explore how an EcoBot can help your organization get ahead of the curve, learn more by clicking the banner below.

‍