Here is a great recent article to read concerning the role entrepreneurship is playing in disaster recovery/disaster preparedness in Puerto Rico.

How Entrepreneurship Is Helping to Save Puerto Rico by Andy Isaacson in Entrepreneur Magazine

What are some key points from the article?

1. Jessie Levin’s, “expeditionary entrepreneurship” is of note. As Isaacson writes, “Governments and NGOs are important, with their standard operating procedures and approaches to administering aid. But entrepreneurship-not profiteering, but the principles of entrepreneurship can accomplish what those bodies cannot: quick and nimble responses to ground level problems, and connective tissue between foreign aid resources and capable local actors like grocery store merchants who are not often engaged. The same instincts that help an entrepreneur build a business, in other words, can help them rebuild a region after catastrophe.”
2. To solve “ineffective communication” Levin was quick to build relationships with a variety of stakeholders. According to Isaacson, “Levin often just connected dots.” In my opinion these stakeholders are: resource allocators, local leaders, and technical implementers. One example of this is connection taking place in the article concerns, “A cutting-edge, solar powered water-purification system was installed at a Boys & Girls Club in the town of Loiza because of an introduction Levin made between MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory and the Rodenberry Foundation.”
   1. Of note here is Levin’s use of a house in San Juan that was used as a central gathering point for the stakeholders to network and to learn how they could help one another.
3. Re-invention of government services. The article cited Levin’s role in re-designing the office of the Puerto Rican Innovation and Technology Services
4. Entrepreneurship is taking place both from local Puerto Rican entrepreneurship, but also from entrepreneurs arriving from outside of Puerto Rico. I like how Levin, fuses the two. In the article he states, “I go into an area and try to identify who’s who. And I try to empower them and connect them around a goal.”
5. DePaul University researchers cite disaster recovery as an impetus for entrepreneurs to abandon fears of failure that may have held them back from trying to offer different products/services before. “”Necessities of the individual and his community override increases in fear of failure,” the DePaul writers report. From this, new solutions are created and new businesses are born.”