Coming: Innovating Networks

One of the major challenges we face in the years ahead will be integrating education, economic development and workforce development. The old federal programs-- many of them stretching back to the 1930's -- create turf in our regions.Defending this turf has not only wasted resources. It has also kept us from seeing new opportunities that are fast emerging for innovation.

Next week, at Workforce Innovations, a group of us will be launching Innovating Networks, a new collaborative web site. 

Innovating Networks is an online community of workforce development professionals and economic development practitioners.  This collaborative web site provides an opportunity to share best practices, success stories and all types of information using Web 2.0 tools while networking and interacting with professionals and practitioners from across the country. It's a promising initiative to bridge the divide among education, economic development and workforce development professionals. I've been working on this initiative with our Web 2.0 technology partner, Near-Time.

I-Open (the Institute for Open Economic Networks) is the non-profit spin-out organization I formed with colleagues from the Center for Regional Economic Issues at Case Western Reserve University. Near-Time and I-Open have been collaborating on a number of promising approaches to support "strategic doing" (how you do strategy in a network), Open Source Economic Development and Open Source Workforce Development.

I'll be reporting from Workforce Innovations in New Orleans next week.