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Georgia Southern University’s Business Innovation Group (BIG) has partnered with its own clients to provide improved resources to the community, where innovators and entrepreneurs in Southeast Georgia can gain skills and training to transform their businesses.
Big with Garrett Clark — a Georgia Southern graduate, Statesboro-Bullock County Chamber of Commerce board member and local business owner — has served as a community catalyst, a role since Big’s inception in 2014. Leadership, problem-solving expertise and marketing strategy consulting capabilities for the Big Leadership Team and entrepreneurs in place.
The current community catalyst, Clark, a visionary and innovator, is an integral part of the environment, according to Dominique Halaby, DPA, founding director of BIG and associate provost for innovation and business at Georgia Southern.
“He’s a really growth-minded entrepreneur, so he’s not just looking at the business he’s deployed, it’s not just leveraging that business, it’s developing growth strategies for him that can scale the business and the steps he’s taking there,” Halabi said. , having an entrepreneur who really thinks about what the data needs might be to help drive those decisions really helps us think about what process we’re putting in place for other entrepreneurs.”
Clark, who owns Rolling Monkey Ice Cream in Statesboro, began working with Big in 2019 after he and his team began outgrowing the business’s first storefront office space due to its rapid success. Clark sought a larger office space in Statesboro, where he found Big’s facilities and operations.
As an experienced engineer and successful business owner, Clark began thinking of ways to add value to Big’s operation.
“I enjoy adding value to and improving any organization I’m a part of. When I got to the big one, I saw great potential and was excited to make improvements to the interactions between customers and incubator staff,” said Clark. “As a visionary and innovator, it’s my nature to question the present, see where the foundational opportunities lie, and chart a path forward.”
From there, Clark used his experience in value stream engineering and the model he used to build his own successful business to develop a framework tailored to the BIG environment to help BIG get the most out of its incubator-accelerator infrastructure.
“I used a framework specifically designed to solve complex problems, to model and understand what the biggest gaps were for the business innovation group,” Clark said. I’ve changed.”
This is what led him to take on his current role as Community Catalyst.
“With that framework and future state map, we’re well on our way to bringing that vision to reality,” Clark said.
The Learning Management System program is designed in a self-paced model to help startups achieve their goals. It provides them with a detailed learning program that walks them through the development cycle within a specific time frame. BIG consultants and staff provide training and coaching support in specific parts of the program.
Clark was a participant in the BIGx Accelerator Program — a face-to-face group model structured around a peer-to-peer mentoring group with monthly accountability sessions — that launched in 2021. Entrepreneurs to go through the program to test and optimize the model. The program has now been shared worldwide with credit for its creation.
Both programs are well supported by senior management and have invested in leaders to execute the two initiatives. Halabi says Clark’s data-driven approach to entrepreneurship has been invaluable to leaders and other entrepreneurs in the space.
“He does an amazing job of scanning the market and seeing what’s going on, especially when it comes to making informed decisions and bringing that really advisory capability,” Halabi said.
Clark has used this framework to grow in his own business, so sharing it with others and helping them solve problems is part of the joy.
“Giving back doing what I love is a very rewarding process,” Clark said. “My hope is to continue to make a positive impact on the people I work with.”
To learn more about BIG and its programs, visit GeorgiaSouthern.edu/BIG.
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