News Articles

There is a fascinating article in this week's New Yorker about the process of innovation.  Malcolm Gladwell discusses the many occurrences of simultaneous innovation and looks at a group from the Pacific Northwest focused on spawning ideas and inventions. 

One of the main advantages of WIRED involves the flexibility of using federal funds to leverage additional investments with new ideas. In North Central Indiana, we used WIRED funds to identify and strengthen entrepreneurship skills through business plan competitions. 

Business plan competitions are one of the best ways to raise the profile of entrepreneurship within a region. We could not used WIRED funds for prize money, so we turned to our state economic development folks for help. They lined up the support we needed to develop a successful competition. 

You can read more about our competition here. 

If you are interested in the background information on our approach, please contact Pat Bacon at the Indiana Venture Center. 

Here are some examples of other business plan competitions around the country: 

• Mississippi State University
  
• UC Berkeley
  
• Rice University
  
• Northwest Venture Championship
  

Mary Ellen Clark, WIRED Bio-1 and Aaron Fichter, Ph.D, Heldrich Center for Workforce Development take a look at how to measure the effectiveness of your implementation strategies.

Some of the key questions addressed include:

1. Are you feeling any pain over the time/resources it takes to collect data and report on it?
2. Are you confident the data you report is accurate

Bio-1 is in Central New Jersey, and comprises 5 counties and 4 workforce investment boards. Some initiatives they have focused on include: life science career campaign, career academies, residential programs, increasing bioscience workforce development with the 'Flak Jackets to Lab Coats' program to reintegrate returning vets into the workforce, enhancing linkages between education and industry via the web.

Metrics Steps:

Plan and Prepare (critical few, leverage/impact), Develop a Framework (strategy/alignment, balance, data collection), Development (Strategy ALignment,Balance, Op. Definitions), Deployment (Vertical alignment, accountability transfer), Collect and Analyze Data (Review Process, Actions, Project ID), Review Process (status, opportunities, projects), Plan and Prepare (Strategic Objectives, Development Team).

Operational Definitions:

Measure Owner: Who will report on this metric

Data Owner:  Who will collect and summarize data

Formula: How is this derived?

Benchmark/Goal: What is the target? If you have benchmarks from comparable regions include them here.

 Read more >>   Options >>  

There is an interesting article on the front page of today's WSJ about how the credit troubles and slowing economy are forcing a number of cities to cut back on the large scale projects that they had planned. This has obvious economic development and job creation consequences and will force regions to look to smaller scale projects to make up the difference.

Florida's Great Northwest released its new cluster analysis last week. Compiled by SRI, the report identifies key clusters to drive the region's economy. 

You can read more about the report here and here.

You can download a copy of the executive summary here. 

You can flip through the SRI presentation below. (Note: the typography is a little goofy, probably due to the translation from a Power Point to a PDF). 

You can visit the web site here.

The Economic Development Administration and Western Carolina University have teamed to produce a useful web site: Know Your Region.

There are a range of helpful materials on the site. Here's an example: a short presentation on defining a region.

Western Carolina has also developed a curriculum on regionalism. I'm currently reviewing it to see how we can integrate the material into our WIRED initiatives.

One interesting insight: The EDA project began with a needs assessment involving 942 economic development and workforce development practitioners. The largest segment of the sample represented professionals working in chambers of commerce and economic development corporations. About 7% represented workforce development professionals. 

Now here is what was interesting. According to the assessment: 

Workforce Development Agencies tend to partner with more organizations to accomplish their development goals than do economic development organizations.

Source: Regionalism and Clusters for Local Development Needs Assessment Results, page 14 available from this page.

Late last year, the Brookings Institution began an effort called The Blueprint for American Prosperity focusing on how metropolitan areas drive economic growth.  Part of that effort looks at what the Federal role should be.  Specifically, the Brookings Institution states that:

Metropolitan areas cannot resolve their challenges alone. Counties, cities, and suburbs operate within a national policy framework, and face challenges bigger than their own capacities. What’s needed is a new partnership between federal, state, local, and private-sector players to help metropolitan areas build on their economic strengths, foster a strong and diverse middle class, and grow in environmentally sustainable ways. Over the next year, we will publish a series of policy papers outlining specific federal reforms.

Brookings has studied what DOL and our Federal partners have done under the WIRED Initiative as part of this effort.  Keep an eye on their Federal Role website as reports on WIRED and other Federal activities should be released in the near future.

IBM has an interesting new report out called "Economic Development in a Rubik's Cube World."  The abstract states:

"The world is currently changing at an increasingly rapid pace, driven by six “megatrends”: deepening globalization, large scale population trends, accelerating technological progress, the "Omni Consumer," the corporate social responsibility imperative and growing political uncertainty. These trends are forcing companies to innovate and refine their fundamental business models. Investment promotion agencies and economic development organizations must not only deal with all those changes, but also with more intense competition. To do so, they need to understand their clients, environment and competitors, and respond effectively."

Here is the study homepage and the full report (pdf).

Skills for Scotland provides a clear, concise framing of a workforce development strategy. It's a good, short report that provides us some valuable perspective on workforce strategy. Download it here.

Here's the vision that frames the document.

Our vision is for a smarter Scotland with a globally competitive economy based on high value jobs, with progressive and innovative business leadership:

• Where people can work in teams, are creative andenterprising and hungry to continually learn new skills.They expect to realise their aspirations and are equipped to achieve their potential in a constantly changing world.People are motivated to contribute to Scotland’s future and are confident that they can do so.
• Where people are entrepreneurial and innovative; smallbusinesses are encouraged to grow and there is strong, coherent support for businesses of all sizes. Migrant workers and overseas students play a valuable role in an expanded workforce and economy.
• Where employers improve productivity by investing in their own staff and are able to access a skilled workforce that is increasingly literate and numerate with good ICT and problem solving skills.
• Where learning and training providers work as one system and thanks to wider use of technology and e-learning, barriers of geography and rurality have been reduced.

Here is the next one article that profiles a union leader from Philadelphia. Cheryl Feldman demonstrates the vision required to implement sector-based models of education and training. 

Specifically, the approach emphasizes portable skills, credentials, and linkages to college wherever possible.

Here's an excerpt from her interview. 

Q: I've been reading about something called sector training. What is that?

A: [Sectors] are clusters of employment and career opportunities within an industry - health care . . . life sciences . . . manufacturing.. . . In the past, workforce development may have had training programs that really didn't drill down into a particular sector. . . .The sector initiative involves . . . really doing an assessment on what the needs of that sector are. From a workforce-development perspective, that incorporates not just the front-line workers, but what are the career-ladder opportunities?

Q: Hasn't a lot of workforce training just been getting people in the door, and then neglecting them in low-level jobs?

A: Absolutely. . . . The best sector initiatives are really approaching a strategy for changing those low-wage jobs into family-sustaining jobs - with health benefits and pensions - that are connected to career ladders.

Q: Give me an example.

A: The residential workers who are working in mental health and mental retardation. . . . There are very few credentials required. And there are no career ladders. . . . You get in that job, and with some exceptions, . . . there's really not anywhere you can go. We have an industry-partnership stakeholder group involved [in] creating a degree program that hasn't existed previously, that gives college credits for our behavioral-health technician program.

Q: After they've done all this work, what are they getting?

A: Two [partner] employers have agreed that the result of this work will be promotion, creating career ladders in direct patient-care delivery.

I encourage you to repeal article. Read more.

The Handbook on Citizen Engagement: Beyond Consultation provides some very practical guidance for developing strategies to engage citizens in setting priorities and in making decisions. Written by Amanda Sheedy at the University of Toronto, the handbook gives both guidelines and examples for designing a civic process.

You can download a copy here.

"How to Make Collaboration Work" is another helpful guide to designing a civic process. This book is longer and a bit more abstract, but its models are very helpful in visualizing a process.

The latest issue of EDA's magazine, Economic Development America, is themed Regional Strategies, Local Action, Global Success.  It has contributions from several familiar groups, including a specific discussion on the Central and Eastern Montana WIRED region.

It can be found here . (PDF)