Articles

The boundaries of economic development are shifting.

The increasingly important role of young professionals in a regional economy represents a prime example. In the past, young professionals had almost no voice in a region's economic development strategy.

Now, however, young professionals are playing an increasingly important role in providing leadership as the economy shifts toward a new set of important economic drivers: networks, creativity, innovation.

Here is an example from Chattanooga. The nonprofit organization CreateHere is pushing out the frontiers of economic development in that city. Read more.

Here's an interesting idea out of Kentucky: employer roundtables. With the State and the University of Kentucky as partners, the Roundtable meets to develop strategies that simultaneously benefit employers and employees.

"Their goal is to help Kentucky's employers become 'employer-of-choice' organizations. They are equally interested in the individual workplace as they are in assuring Kentucky's ability to court and secure viable businesses and talent from around the world," said Personnel Cabinet Secretary Nikki Jackson. 

You can read more about the Roundtable here and visit their web site here.

Oregon's governor is focusing on green jobs and sustainability. He sees green technology or clean technology as a useful organizing principle for the state's strategy.

Under this umbrella, the governor is including on a wide range of targets including green building, solar power, electric cars, and clean technology entrepreneurs. You can read more about his strategic thinking from this article.

A week ago, about 3,000 workforce development professionals attended Workforce Innovations in New Orleans.

This event highlights the major developments taking place in the workforce system nationwide. This morning, the Department of Labor announced that it has posted all of the presentations from Workforce Innovations on the event website. You can review them here.

This comes from Chris Gibbons in Littleton, CO. He points to a good story in the Wall Street Journal on the Kalamazoo Promise. The story highlights how the dynamics of economic development are shifting toward brainpower.

(In a conference a couple of weeks ago in Milwaukee, an executive told our table. "Location decisions are based on two factors. Who will we be close to? Who can we partner with? In other words, the innovation climate. The second factor is brainpower.")

The article points out that education becomes a major driver in location decisions:

Other companies besides Kaiser have unveiled plans to create jobs in Kalamazoo, with some saying the Promise played a role in their decision. Among them is MPI Research, a privately held preclinical drug-testing company in Mattawan, Mich., which in April announced plans to create 3,300 jobs in southwestern Michigan -- including 400 in downtown Kalamazoo -- over the next five years as it moves into laboratory and office space once housing Pfizer.

Read more.

Here's a story from El Dorado, AR on how they have adapted the program. This podcast  is from Wall Street Journal.

Next week at Workforce Innovations, I'll be releasing a white paper on open innovation models of economic development and workforce development. I've attached a copy.

I will also be releasing a white paper on Innovating Networks. I've attached a copy of that one, as well.

There will be a third one on Strategic Doing for a session I am conducting on that topic. It's not quite ready yet. I'll post it here shortly.

Strategic Doing is a set of principles, practices and disciplines for implementing strategy in a network. Old models of strategic planning were designed for hierarchical organizations, and they do not work well.  Strategic Doing represents the alternative.

(All this material is distributed under a Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution License. That means you are free to distribute and modify anything you see in the white paper for commercial or noncommercial purposes. You do not need permission. Just tell people where you got it.)

The American Electronics Association has released its 2008 Cyber Cities report, which ranks 60 metros on high tech employment. The report is expensive: $250 for non-members. Here is an overview of the findings from Cybercities 2008: An Overview of the High-Technology Industry in the Nations Top 60 Cities.

The AEA provided custom press releases for 35 of the 60 cities. You can access these press releases from this page.

You can order a copy of the report from this page.

Educational attainment is the single most important driver of regional economic development. So, it's no surprise that leading communities are starting to explore how to boost educational opportunities, as an economic development strategy.

As this strategy evolves, the separation between economic development and workforce development will dissolve.

Last week, two important events took place. Both involve new types of scholarship programs.

PromiseNet 2008

Since its launch a couple of years ago, the Kalamazoo Promise has focused civic leaders on new approaches to create incentives for education. The initiative provides college scholarships to children in the Kalamazoo City Schools. Watch a video briefing of the Kalamazoo Promise.

Educational incentives -- directed toward people -- have a direct impact on economic outcomes (higher incomes over a lifetime).Economic incentives directed toward companies generally do not work and are largely a waste of money.

PromiseNet 2008 brought together representatives from 75 communities across the country to explore college scholarships for city school children. The event marks the beginning of a national movement toward community scholarships.

Read more: Kalamazoo PromiseNet conference to share programs' expertise.

Early child education scholarships

In another event last week, I attended a conference at the Federal Reserve in Minneapolis for the Big Ten schools and the University of Chicago. We focused on the importance of education (human capital, as the economists would have it) to economic outcomes in the Great Lakes. Our major research universities are exploring new avenues of collaboration.

At lunch yesterday, Art Rolnick, an economist with the FRB in Minneapolis, briefed us on a new scholarship pilot that focuses on early child care. The scholarship program is remarkably simple: it awards parents of young children with a scholarship for early education. This focus on early education as an economic development strategy has a strong foundation of evidence to support it. Read more.

The prestigious Committee for Economic Development in Washington DC strongly supports this strategy. The focus on early childhood development is closely connected to new learning in brain development. Here's an excellent overview by Joan Stiles, a cognitive scientist at UCSD.

EDPros are often frustrated about what to do with K-12 school systems that do not work very well.

The solution, of course, is to innovate.

One important innovation in high schools is career academies. Ft. Wayne is one city that has committed itself to this strategy, and it will pay off in the long run, as employers continue to look for talent. 

In Washington yesterday, the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation released an important study on the impact of career academies. The report represents the first rigorous evaluation of career academies.

After evaluating graduates from nine career academies, the authors found that eight years after graduation, the career academy graduates had significantly higher employment and earnings.

The report also dispels one of the more dangerous myths we share today: that career and technical education in high school limits post secondary options.

To quote from the summary (in language that is a bit stilted, but you'll get the idea):

The findings demonstrate the feasibility of improving labor market preparation and successful school-to-work transitions without compromising academic goals and preparation for college. Investments in career-related experiences during high school can produce substantial and sustained improvements in the labor market prospects and transitions to adulthood of youth. In fact, Career Academies are one of the few youth-focused interventions that have been found to improve the labor market prospects of young men.

There are about 2,500 career academies across the U.S.

You can can read more about the report here.

Here's a suggestion: Send the article and report to school superintendents and other civic leaders in your region. Suggest that they connect with the Career Academy Support Network at UC Berkeley to learn more.

Most EDPros know more about the water pressure in their industrial parks than they do about the brainpower in their schools. That stands to reason: economic development, as a profession, started out with a relatively simple model (first applied in Mississippi in the 1930's): recruitment.

Now, however, times have changed.
The key to building wealth for companies in the U.S. is not low cost land or even cheap labor, or incentives. It's brainpower.

But if you are like I was a few years ago, you are reluctant to get into education and workforce issues. They seem so complex and confusing.

My word of advice: Get over it.

(In my case, I have a hard-nosed superintendent from Sabine Parish, Louisiana to thank. After a presentation in about 1997, he chastised me for not including any mention of education and workforce issues. His criticism got me to thinking. It took me a while, but, eventually, I figured out he was right.)

EDPros who do not develop brainpower strategies for their regions will, sadly, become largely irrelevant over the next decade.Workforce considerations will drive investment decisions over the next decade.

One way to start is to attend Workforce Innovations 2008 in New Orleans in mid July. You'll get a sweep of the leading workforce issues. I'll be there making a couple of presentations. Over the past couple of years, I have been working more closely with workforce development professionals, learning how innovations in workforce development are starting to pop up everywhere. 

If you are interested in coming to New Orleans and acelerating your education about workforce issues, visit the Workforce Innovations web site.

The Alliance for Science and Technology Research in America (ASTRA) has released a new series of state level reports on STEM education (science, technology , engineering and math).

In a companion series, ASTRA also issued scorecards on state research and development.

You can download a copy of both reports for your state from this page. While the graphics are a little goofy, the data provides useful state-level snapshots.

As workforce skills become tighter, EDPros will be looking for new ways to provide assurances to employers that they have a ready supply of qualified workers. In the years ahead, we will see more more communities moving toward career readiness certificates.

In part, the move toward these certificates reflects the fact that employers can no longer rely on a school diplomas to guarantee that graduates have given set of needed workplace skills.

Here's an example of how economic development program Batesville, Arkansas is leveraging its career readiness certificate as an economic development strategy. Read more.

If you'd like to learn more about career readiness certificates, the Career Readiness Certificate Consortium is a good place to start. The consortium is an alliance of states engaged in putting career readiness certificates into practice.  Learn more.

Here's a good briefing on the credential.

Virgina is one of a number of states that has moved forward with career readiness certificates. Visit their web site. You can visit North Carolina's site here.