An Indianapolis business owner will lead the state’s new Office of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, with a focus on supporting Hoosiers’ launching the next generation of Main Street businesses.
Brian Schutt, the co-founder of Refinery46 — a co-working space and startup incubator in Indianapolis — and co-founder of Homesense Heating and Cooling, graduated from Purdue University’s business school in 2003. He said part of the office’s role includes featuring successful, homegrown startups in the Hoosier State.
“The most inspiring thing is to just know somebody else’s story. And I think we have a lot of those,” Schutt told the Indiana Capital Chronicle. “A big part of the job is connecting with some of the flourishing businesses that already exist and sharing those stories. Because I don’t think the state can force entrepreneurship — but we can help tell more stories that inspire people to recognize that they have gifts and they can be problem solvers.”
The Indiana General Assembly established the office earlier this year in conjunction with an Indiana Economic Development Corporation transparency effort, explicitly charging the director with “develop(ing) and administer(ing) programs to support the growth of small business, entrepreneurship and innovation.”
Schutt noted that while starting a business in Indiana is relatively easy in the legal sense, he said he didn’t see the office as prescriptively telling businesses how to flourish, but rather finding “where we can come alongside and where (we can) get out of the way.”
“There’s some programs that already exist that we’re going to analyzing and seeing how they’re working,” said Schutt.
Gov. Mike Braun, who made the announcement Monday morning, has long lauded the office’s anticipated launch, tying it to his own experience as a business owner.
“(First Lady) Maureen and I lived the American dream of growing Main Street businesses in our hometown, and I want every Hoosier to have that opportunity. Our goal is to make Indiana the best place in the country to start and build your own business, and the Office of Entrepreneurship and Innovation led by Brian Schutt will be a nation-leading resource to help Main Street entrepreneurs,” he said in a release.
The office will report to Secretary of Commerce David Adams, also a Braun appointee. Schutt will also oversee the state’s certified technology parks.
The state of entrepreneurship in Indiana
The law creating Schutt’s new role also directs him to identify ways to support rural communities and other underrepresented socioeconomic communities as well as youth entrepreneurship.
“There is no thriving community without a thriving entrepreneur base,” said Schutt. “… we’re not going to come through with this idea that central Indiana, Indianapolis has all the answers. Really, it has to be a collaborative effort. And a lot of solutions are, necessarily, community led.”
According to the Kauffman Indicators of Entrepreneurship, Indiana lags slightly behind its national peers when it comes to establishing new business opportunities. Though the national rate of new entrepreneurs in 2020 was 0.34% — meaning that 3.4 people out of every 1,000 adults became new entrepreneurs — Indiana’s was only 0.25%.
Additionally, those startups created just 3.5 jobs for every 1,000 people while the national average was five jobs.
Schutt has considered how to curate the next generation of entrepreneurs before, including a 2022 commentary in the Indianapolis Business Journal on the role of parents, with a goal of helping Hoosier children “see problems as opportunities.”
“If you see problems as opportunities, there’s never going to be a shortage of opportunities,” Schutt said, highlighting Innovate WithIN and High School Hustle programs. “These are programs that already exist that really focus in on that mindset … the capacity to see a problem as an opportunity and not necessarily look around for someone else to be a problem solver.”
In particular, lemonade stands are a longtime favorite for Schutt — though an effort to protect those stands from local interventions has repeatedly failed — and he spent six years as a board member of Lemonade Day in Indianapolis, a program geared toward children, according to his LinkedIn.
“Lemonade stands are a great foundation. There’s something catalytic when a kid is given the opportunity to create something on their own and earn that first dollar,” said Schutt.
This story was first posted to the Indiana Capital Chronicle. Learn more here.
The Indiana Capital Chronicle is an independent, nonprofit news organization dedicated to giving Hoosiers a comprehensive look inside state government, policy and elections. The site combines daily coverage with in-depth scrutiny, political awareness and insightful commentary.