Go ahead. Just offer an e-commerce course to the owner of a small, nascent business. Odds are that you’ll get a courteous excuse why he won’t enroll. But the response is usually different if you offer a beginning entrepreneur a class on advanced research methods for tracking supplies, marketing, and keeping tabs on how established competitors operate.

“E-commerce is about using the Internet,” says Winifred McGee, Lebanon county extension director and member of the nine-county Capital Region Economic and Community Development Team. Owners of small businesses and people who would like to start a small enterprise hear the term and are often quick to say, “I don’t need that,” McGee says, drawing from her experiences in teaching classes on the subject. They have a perception that it’s about building a website, keeping it current and having all the bells and whistles necessary to attract attention and customers.

Of course, she says, if that’s what the business needs, then that’s what e-commerce can do. But three-quarters of e-commerce does not involve transactions between consumers and vendors, rather they are about business-to-business issues.

“It’s a new tool for very busy business people,” McGee says. A few years ago, she taught the material under the e-commerce label and students balked at sitting in classrooms filled with computers and guest speakers. Now the knowledge is easily passed — and well-received by students — during regular classroom sessions in programs like Tilling the Soil of Opportunity.

Earlier classes worked out well because of good collaborations between Penn State Cooperative Extension’s Economic and Community Development and groups like Harrisburg Area Community College that could offer computers and high speed Internet connectivity.

Bill Shuffstall, senior extension educator at Penn State Cooperative Extension, takes a panoramic view of e-commerce that goes beyond businesses that take advantage of it and workers who earn from it. He starts in communities where broadband connectivity is not yet available by helping community leaders understand what it can bring to their regions. As he says, he helps people "understand what it is and what they can do with it.”

A co-author of the website, connectingcommunities.info, he helps leaders in government, business and non-profits understand the potential of broadband. Then he assists them in conducting assessments of what they have and what they need, ranging from trained workers to technology to a plan of action.

In rural Potter County, much work revolved around the education system and included students and high school computer labs during off-school hours. Years from its humble beginnings, the work continues to evolve.

Many stumbling blocks fall in the way of connectivity, Shuffstall says. Some community leaders know the importance of broadband but feel they lack the expertise to do anything about it. Local governments don’t have any official role in establishing broadband connectivity so it’s up to the private sector, he says, explaining, “They go where they get the largest return on their investment.”
When broadband first became available, it was largely in urban areas. “As it becomes more pervasive...people are becoming more aware of why they need it,” Shuffstall says.

People on county and local levels are beginning to understand what they need to provide in order to attract large companies to their areas, he says. “You have to make sure it has broadband—big broadband—fiber preferably.” A lot of growth in the private sector is in small business and they, too, need access to broadband.

As for the role of Cooperative Extension’s Economic and Community Development team, Shuffstall says, “My role is bringing folks together on a community level.”