Transforming Florida one community at a time: Collier County

For the past nine months or so, I've been keeping my eye on an interesting initiative coming out of Collier County, Florida. That's where Naples is located.  Economic development in Florida faces many of the same deep transformations confronting older industrial states like Michigan. In Florida, real estate development drove strategies.

Now, it has become increasingly clear that regional economies in Florida must diversify.  In 2007, housing prices in Florida began slipping after years of strong growth. Last year, it was cleared almost everyone that Florida's boom had turned to bust.

Late last year, the Economic Development Council of Collier County launched Project Innovation to diversify the economy. You can get a sense of the depth and breadth of this initiative by downloading an overview of their strategy.   In a commentary this month, the chairman of Project Innovation assesses their progress.

The first order of summer work divided the organizations into six working groups, one dedicated to each of the drivers to begin to identify measurable goals. These goals will advance innovation, economic and environmental diversification and sense of place. The means of evaluating each goal’s ability to create the positive change are being incorporated into the plan.

To qualify, the goal must serve a quantifiable role in driving prosperity and supporting innovation at levels catalytic to achieve sustainability and allow current and future generations of our community to thrive.

The process of refining the goals and the means of measuring them has been completed, and the endorsers are now progressing to the second order of business: charting existing and identifying new community projects that will help achieve these goals. Through consensus-building, creativity and collaboration of all the endorser organizations and the community, a specific, actionable blueprint for building a healthy economic foundation is beginning to emerge. As it is implemented, it will create a culture that will attract high-wage businesses and an environment that will support world-class employees.