PCRD

Incentives to Encourage Collaboration

A small group of cities and towns in Northeast Ohio is trying to figure out strategies to share revenues. In this way, they hope to curb the destructive competition among cities and towns within the region. You can learn more about this initiative from its web site.

Now, the State of Ohio is exploring ways to encourage this type of collaboration. Read more.
Indiana should be interested interested in following this approach.

We can start by looking at the WIRED initiative (Workforce Innovation in Regional Economic Development) and the Regional Innovation Grants (pre-WIRED grants) that the Department of Labor has been making. The Department of Labor has been stimulating regional collaboration by placing positive incentives in front of regions.

You can learn more about what is going on in the WIRED regions from the WIRED Nation web site.
In the years ahead, state policy-makers will be redesigning economic development incentives to encourage these collaborations. But we can expect local incentives to come under more scrutiny, as well. We will see new types of local economic development incentives.

Here's an example. Recently, I worked with Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) to develop a local innovation zone incentive initiative. The initiative is designed to encourage local collaborations. It begins with a concept of "anchor partners", which must include at least one college or university. You can learn more from the project web site.

WIRED….What’s That?

Posted by Peggy Hosea

“Where are you working?”  “I’m working with WIRED.”  “WIRED??”“Yes, WIRED, Workforce Innovations in Regional Economic Development.” Throughout the past year, this question has come up more times than I can say, and still I struggle with a quick and easy ‘while you’re in line at the grocery store’ type of answer.

Staying up on the news about WIRED is equally difficult.  Each day I dutifully read the Google Alerts that have been sent my way about WIRED only to see such entries as:

• Obesity May Be Wired In The Brain, Rat Study Suggests
• Forbes.com names America's most wired cities
• Grass roots gets wired

But occasionally the search pays off and I find really relevant articles like these:

• WIRED to Host Entrepreneur Workshop - Newsroom - Inside INdiana Business with Gerry Dick
• High hopes at Rochester’s New Tech High School
• According to forum, green is good

There are always the basics of course, like ‘WIRED is a $15 million DOL grant being administered by Purdue.’  And the national tag line is “WIRED: Talent Driving Prosperity”. But what do we do?  Here are some examples:

• We’re developing skills so that our employees will have jobs - better skills and better jobs.
• We’re encouraging individuals, young and old, to become entrepreneurs and create their own jobs, for themselves and for others.
• We’re working with businesses to be sure they’re using the latest technology available to keep them as growing, internationally-competitive employers.
• We’re training their employees, providing certificates in manufacturing, energy efficiency and several other important initiatives.
• We’re working with community leaders, elected officials, everyone involved in education, workforce and economic development to find the right ideas to move our region forward.
• We’re creating a network to bring leaders together to learn from each other, share challenges, successes, and get our region on the map.  Not just the Indiana map, the world map.
• So where am I working?  It’s still hard to describe and I would love to hear your suggestions for a quick and easy answer.  In the meantime, I just find the longest line at the grocery store.

Contact Peggy Hosea [email protected]  to learn more about WIRED or to suggest a shorter explanation.  You can also visit the WIRED website at www.indiana-wired.net.

A Lifelong Learning System for Mature Workers

As part of the Indiana WIRED initiative, the Tecumseh Area Partnership has developed a business plan for a regional Lifelong Learning System for older workers (45+) in North Central Indiana. The plan includes five recommendations to assist older workers to remain in the workforce and help employers attract and retain these workers. The following is an overview of the recommendations:

• Develop an informational funnel website for key learning opportunities.
• Provide fee-for-service consulting to employers through workshops and individual assessments related to mature and aging workforce issues.
• Provide direct services to lifelong learners
• Create and launch a Manufacturers Cooperative to secure and provide resources for training and development, outreach, and other basic human resource development or back office services.
• Explore the possibility for cable channel development to provide the public with information about various targeted careers and pathways to reach those careers. This will be researched during the initial year for future implementation.

The development of the business plan involved a 26-member task force and technical assistance from the Center for Adult and Experiential Learning (CAEL). The complete business plan is available here and a list of task force members is available here.

Angels in Our Midsts

Part of the Indiana WIRED's goals are to create a more active network of Angel Investors in North Central Indiana, recognizing that more investment in entrepreneurship will lead to new business, new jobs for the region, and economic growth. A step in that direction was taken yesterday with a full-day workshop designed for Angels and potential Angels. The workshop, Angel Investing: The Art of the Deal was held yesterday. The Lafayette Journal & Courier covered it in an article here.

Yesterday's event marks the first time Angels from across the North Central Indiana regional economy were brought together under one roof to explore and discuss how investment in this region can lead to wealth creation and economic development. This is a great start in creating a regional angel network.

One of Indiana WIRED's four primary strategies is to Create an Entrepreneurship Super Region and the specific goals of this strategy include:

• Create a regional community and culture that supports entrepreneurship
• Develop stronger connections among and build the capacities of support organizations
• Increase the availability of resources for existing and emerging entrepreneurs

Building a Rural Entrepreneurship Network

Posted by Ed Morrison

Count Minnesota as another state, like Indiana, that is moving toward more entrepreneurial approaches to rural economic development. Our Indiana WIRED strategy is designed to build the foundations needed to support innovation and entrepreneurship across our 14 county region.

In Minnesota, the state has been promoting traditional recruitment strategies through its JOBZ initiatives. The results are disappointing.

Now, attention is shifting to more entrepreneurial approaches. Last week, the Star Tribune wrote an interesting editorial endorsing this shift. A report by a new think tank, Minnesota 2020 outlines the shift. You can read more about the report here. You can download a copy here.

Minnesota Rural Partners is taking a lead in developing the foundations of rural entrepreneurship in Minnesota. One idea: Establish a Rural Enterprise Corps to provide coaches to aspiring entrepreneurs. To learn more, you can download a copy of their feasibility study here.

We will be examining this idea closely, since Indiana WIRED's entrepreneurship support strategy focuses on leveraging our extension offices throughout the state using a model of economic gardening. We will be launching our first center in our Entrepreneurship Business Information Network (eBIN) in Clinton County this fall.

Using Information to Drive Regional Workforce and Economic Strategies

Remember when Ross Perot pulled out those charts during the 1992 Presidential Debate? Later, everyone made fun of him. Here's a secret, I thought it was pretty cool. Maybe that was the first glimpse of my inner data geek. For those of us working in economic and community development, data and information, and the way it is presented, is a vitally important part of what we do. How do we communicate economic trends to decision makers? How do help inform a large group of stakeholders so that they can reach consensus about where a community, region, or state needs to go? Thoughtful analysis and effective presentation can help.

A few weeks ago, the U.S. Department of Labor Employment and Training Administration held a regional conference on Workforce Information Driving Regional Economies. Several workforce and economic development professionals (myself included) made presentations about how we use data and information to help us develop regional strategies. All of those presentations are now online and available here. If you want to get right to the Indiana stuff, my presentation, which focused on our Indiana WIRED initiative, is available here. Kathy Burns of the Tecumseh Area Partnership also presented. Her presentation is available here.

North Central Indiana Complete Initiative

For well over a decade now, Indiana has recognized we have a major problem related to educational attainment. We are seriously lacking in the number of college-educated adults who call themselves Hoosiers. We've tried lots of strategies and some are working better than others. Many of the things we've tried are long-term efforts and we won't know for another decade whether or efforts will pay off. Imagine if a strategy emerged that was cheap, fast, and significantly effective. We may now be embarking on such an effort.

This elegantly simple idea was first tried at the University of New Mexico and the results were nothing short of ground-breaking. UNM realized they had a significant number of former students who got started on a degree, did well, but for one reason or another dropped out. Here is the story of one of their former students:

The story of Arellana Cordero is all too common: An honors student in high school, Ms. Cordero entered the University of New Mexico in 1993 with high expectations of becoming a college graduate. Five years later, with only 15 credits remaining to receive her baccalaureate degree, she abandoned her goal and dropped out.

Cordero's problem was not low grades or a lack of money. Rather, she left because, after five years, her college career had gone astray. She lived at home, felt disconnected from the university and had begun to doubt she would ever receive a degree, however close it might be. So when outside pressures of a job and marriage began to tug at her life, she walked away from college.

Through UNM's program, Cordero was prompted to get back in school to complete here degree. She did and is now working on a graduate degree. UNM has tons of stories like that. You can read a great article about the program here.

So, what's this got to do with Indiana? Well, the WIRED effort in North Central Indiana is importing this idea to their region - only this time they are taking the mission of "transforming the North Central Indiana economy" to heart by enlisting four educational institutions in the project. Purdue University, Indiana University Kokomo, and Ivy Tech Community College of both Lafayette and Kokomo will work together to launch the North Central Indiana Complete Initiative. WIRED funds will be used to provide up to fifty $1,000 scholarships per institution (for a total of 200) as incentive to get these walkaways back in school to complete their degrees.

What could this mean the the regional economy? Well, consider the fact that the average wage for non-college degreed Hoosiers is about $27,000 per year and the average for their college-educated counterparts is $58,000 annually, this could do quite a bit for the regional economy. If this pilot works, the State, I'm sure, will take a serious look at how to take this effort beyond the pilot.   

STEM-Focused Entrepreneurship Effort

What do you get when you cross the nation's top university-based research park with an economic region's best and brightest science, math, and technology high school students? The next Bill Gates or YouTube guys? Probably not, their old news! You just might end up with the NEXT big thing - the new business, product, or idea that will rock the world.

The North Central Indiana WIRED group is going to find out this summer by launching the state's first entrepreneurship academy exclusively focused on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math). Running the program is the Purdue Research Foundation, the folks who are behind the Purdue Research Park (the aforementioned #1 university-based research park in the country). Participants, coming from each of the region's public high schools, will be nominated by their teachers. These are the kids that excel in the STEM disciplines.

They'll come to Purdue for an intensive week-long (July 29 - Aug 3) academy led by PRF staff, university faculty, industry leaders, business experts, and successful high-tech business entrepreneurs. You can learn more about the academy here. The new model for regional economic development is all about linking assets and leveraging resources. This is a great example of that.

Using Industry Clusters to Drive Entrepreneurship

Most of us know about crafting economic development strategies around a region's
"Star Clusters" - those that are big and growing, but what can/should we do with the emerging clusters - those that are smaller but also showing great potential for growth? How about focusing entrepreneurship efforts within these areas?

The North Central Indiana WIRED region is considering a business plan competition focused on these growing industry clusters. The bubble chart in this post depicts these areas - in the lower right quadrant. They include Business & Financial Services, Information Technology & Telecommunications, Arts & Entertainment, Defense and Security, Transportation & Logistics, and Apparel and Textiles. This is another example of how a great tool like regional clusters can focus programming.

WIRED Region Industry Clusters & Airports

Here is another map produced for the WIRED region. It shows two important attributes of the region - industry clusters by size (number of establishments) and location of public airports. No great insights yet, just one more tool to inform the process.