2025 tested ecosystem builders in ways that required both resilience and adaptation. Budget cuts and political uncertainty put pressure on the teams responsible for supporting entrepreneurs and growing local economies. Many organizations faced questions about how to demonstrate value and prove impact with limited resources.
The easy response would have been to pull back and wait for conditions to improve. Instead, ecosystem builders across the country responded by fixing the infrastructure problems they’d been working around for years. They built systems that made coordination easier and impact more measurable, turning constraints into opportunities to address challenges that existed long before 2025.
These aren’t hypothetical examples. They’re what actually happened when organizations decided that uncertain times required better systems, not slower action.
Kansas Built for a Global Stage
When Kansas learned it would host six matches for a major global sporting event in 2026, the state’s Small Business Office saw an opportunity to fix problems that existed long before the announcement. Entrepreneurs needed better access to procurement opportunities. Support organizations needed clearer capacity-building investments. The state needed infrastructure that would outlast the event.
Kansas launched ConnectKS, giving entrepreneurs across the state a single place to find resources, events, funding, and support. They used their platform to create a centralized bid board, making procurement more accessible to businesses that had never navigated government contracting.
The event created urgency, but the systems Kansas built will keep working long after the matches are over.
Oregon Connected Regional Differences
Oregon’s Regional Innovation Hubs were designed to encourage collaboration across the state, but each hub operated with its own systems and data practices. The team at Business Oregon needed to respect local ownership while creating ways for those systems to inform each other.
They implemented the Ecosystem Relationship Manager to coordinate across regional hubs. Now referrals will be visible, engagement tracked, and the state will have better data to guide investment decisions and their Prosperity Roadmap. The goal is to identify gaps faster, make more informed funding decisions, and tell a stronger story about the work happening across Oregon’s entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Oregon spent time finding the right solution. Once they did, they prioritized getting started over waiting for perfect conditions.
Pittsburgh Made Arts Infrastructure Visible
The Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council launched ArtPulse using the Nonprofit Intelligence Dashboard to track the financial health of arts organizations across the region. The team recognized that understanding nonprofit vitality required better data than what existed.
The dashboard tracks revenue diversity, grant dependency, fundraising efficiency, and cash flow stability. It gives the Council a consistent view of where organizations are stable, where they may be vulnerable, and where better coordination can make a difference. The information is informing board conversations, leadership planning, and strategic support across the region, treating arts organizations as the foundational infrastructure they are.
The Work Spread Across Different Builders
This pattern repeated across different types of organizations throughout 2025.
Chambers of Commerce like the Greater Cleveland Partnership, the Maryland Chamber, and the Huntsville/Madison County Chamber are working to deliver more value to members while demonstrating impact to stakeholders.
The Better Business Bureau of Greater Maryland will become the first BBB in the country to implement both EcoMap Discover and the Ecosystem Scorecard, showing how trust-focused organizations can use data infrastructure to serve small businesses more effectively.
Universities, including Shippensburg, Stony Brook, Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures, and MICA, are finding ways to connect academic resources with local entrepreneurial activity, making research more accessible and student ventures more visible.
Cities like Philadelphia, Baltimore, San Antonio, Denton, and Converse, Texas, are building better coordination systems for local economic development. The Regional District of Central Okanagan in Kelowna, British Columbia, and Connecture Canada are showing the need extending beyond U.S. borders.
Organizations like Rev1 Ventures, Venture Catalysts, Invest Newark, the Corpus Christi Regional Economic Development Corporation, the Gilbert Family Foundation, and the Association of University Research Parks are demonstrating demand across every part of ecosystem work.
What This Means for Other Builders
These organizations faced the same fundamental challenges most ecosystem builders navigate. Fragmented information makes coordination difficult. Disconnected partners duplicate effort. Limited visibility into outcomes makes it hard to demonstrate impact to funders and stakeholders.
They responded by putting better systems in place. The infrastructure now tracks who’s being served and captures how support moves through the ecosystem. Resources that were once scattered across different platforms are now easier to find. Anecdotal stories that couldn’t inform strategy have become data that supports decision-making, particularly when budgets are under pressure and demonstrating value matters most.
The infrastructure needs to work for lean teams, fit into existing workflows, and deliver sophistication without requiring dedicated staff just to manage the platform. When those conditions are met, ecosystem builders can focus on the work instead of fighting their tools.
Looking Forward
2026 will bring its own challenges. More regions need these systems in place. More organizations need infrastructure that helps them coordinate effectively before coordination challenges slow momentum.
The builders who kept building in 2025 showed what’s possible when the right systems support their work. They turned constraints into opportunities to fix what should have existed already, building for durability rather than just meeting deadlines.
If you’re facing similar challenges in your ecosystem, we’d welcome the conversation about what you’re building and how better infrastructure might support it in the coming year.
