Inside REI

Lorain Community College

Yesterday, I spent the afternoon at Lorain Community College, where I learned more about GLIDE, Great Lakes Innovation and Development Enterprise.

GLIDE represents a partnership between the Lorain County Chamber of Commerce, Lorain County Community College and the Lorain County Commissioners to promote innovation in the region. It represents a valuable model that can be replicated across Northeast Ohio. We will be exploring this issue with a follow-up meeting in the next few weeks.

WIRE-Net Board Meeting

I spent today on the shores of Lake Erie with the WIRE-Net board. For those of you who do not know, WIRE-Net is the West Side Industrial Retention and Expansion Network. I learned about WIRE-Net years ago, while doing economic development projects in the South.

Business retention and expansion represents the "dishwashing" of economic development. It's not the exciting part of the profession, but it is the most important. The reason is simple: Most jobs are created by established businesses. Over its 17 year history, WIRE-Net has figured out how to deliver value added services to manufacturers on Cleveland's West Side. It is a national model, but I suspect that most economic development leaders in Cleveland do not consider it so. Their mistake.

WIRE-Net's value is even more important now, because Northeast Ohio should be standing in the national spotlight in discussions over the future of manufacturing. REI will be working more closely with WIRE-Net in the months ahead. The immediate opportunities for collaboration focus on helping WIRE-Net move forward as an effective advocate of the manufacturing economy in Northeast Ohio.

Meeting with Angelou Economics

Mark Rosentraub (Dean of the Levin College at CSU), Steve Minter (Special Assistant to the President of CSU), and I met with representatives of Angelou Economics, a firm specializing in technology-based economic development. I have long admired Angelou's work, because his firm focuses on the process of economic development.

Economic development operates in "the civic space". That is, we are designing investment projects that fall outside the four walls of any one organization. In general terms, there are two types of economic development initaitives: publicly-led, privately supported and privately-led, publilcly supported.

Cleveland's turnaround in the 1980's focused on the first type of project (publicly-led, privately supported). Transforming the region's economy now will depend on developing skills in the second arena (privately-led, publicly supported). Angelou Economics has a good deal of experience in this area.

During our meeting, we emphasized that Northeast Ohio has an extraordinary base of economic development assets in our region's colleges and universities: Cleveland State, Case, Kent State, University of Akron, Youngstown State all have a role to play in our economic transformation. We used the meeting to introduce Angelou to these assets.

NEOSA Student Chapter

As an outgrowth of our collaboration with NEOSA, REI will sponsor a student chapter of NEOSA at Weatherhead. NEOSA, the Northeast Ohio Software Alliance, meets at Weatherhead each month. While NEOSA student chapters operate on other campuses, we have no student chapter at Weatherhead. If you are interested, contact us at REI.

Weatherhead China Business Network: A new student group

REI is supporting the Weatherhead China Business Network, a new student group focused on exploring the business opportunities in China for Weatherhead, Case and the region. We are working with the group to formulate a business plan.

Biz Art: A new student group at Weatherhead

REI is supporting Biz Art, a group of students interested in exploring the intersection of business and art. We are planning a series of events to highlight creative digital media and the business opportunities for our region.

Partnership with CSU

We've been working on a partnership in economic development with Cleveland State University. The purpose of the partnership is combine the economic development reources of our universities to benefit Northeast Ohio. As a next step, we will be expanding the partnership to other colleges and univeristies in the region. Colleges and universities need to be in the center of our region's economic transformation.

An update on what we have been doing

Here are the tasks we have been working on over the holidays:

1. We've been assembling our team for Making Change, and we are getting ready to schedule our working retreat in January. In December we conducted a planning session for the January retreat. (You may remember, the retreat follows our annual meeting last November. It is the next step in "Making Change", the process for building an innovation economi in Northeast Ohio.)

We are continuing to finalize the business plan for REI@Weatherhead, while structuring the Making Change process.

2. We have agreed to work with Jennifer Thomas at the Civic Innovation Lab initiative. For the projects selected, REI will provide consulting support from both our professional staff and students. For the projects that are not selected, we will provide a seminar on how different projects can be refined to improve their chances of success.

3. We have discussed the proposed economic development levy scheduled for March with Cuyahoga County staff. We have been asked help the County shape this agenda and align it with other activities going on in the region.

4. We are working with Jack Kleinhentz and Ziona Austrian from CSU on a proposal to the Ohio Aerospace Insitute to develop a clearer understanding of the strategic issues facing Ohio's aerospace companies. Hopefully, we will have this project completed by March or April. Jack and Ziona are taking the lead on the project.

5. We have been working with Mari Rege, a member of the Case economics faculty, on a proposal to upgrade Doan Brook and Rudy Rodgers Park. Mari has a class in environmental economics, and the class did an excellent job estimating the value of park improvements. Our next step is to work with KSU's Urban Design Center to define an on-going program of student engagement to improve the park.

6. We are starting a discussion with Ruth Durak and Hunter Morrison of the Urban Design Center to develop a working session on how to build quality connected places around our region's colleges and universities. The working title of the session: Creating Smart Places: The Challenges of Campus Community Planning.

7. We evaluated our work with Ashland University in hosting a Chinese delegation in Cleveland in early December. We will be working with Ashland on another delegation which is scheduled now for May. As an outgrowth of these activities, we have staqrted to assemble an internal team of Chinese graduate students who will assist us.

8. Ashland Univeristy has invited us to participate in another Cleveland-based initiative. Ashland is working with East High School in Cleveland on a financial education program. We will be devoted some staff time to exploring how this program could be expanded more aggressively. Key Bank is a supporter of the project.

NEOSA Meeting at Weatherhead

On December 17 ath 7:30 AM we will be hosting a regular meeting of NEOSA, the Northeast Ohio Software Association. The monthly meeting will cover the topic, "The Other Side of Off-Shore Outsourcing"You can learn more about the meeting from this page.

Connections with NOCHE

Yesterday, I met with Chuck Hickman and Monica Turoczy of NOCHE. We are working to coordinate our activities. As you may recall, NOCHE was part of the Counicl on Competitiveness summit held in Cleveland on Novermber 21.

The Summit identified three areas of concentration. NOCHE is working on a project to "stem the brain drain" from Northeast Ohio (although it will not be called that). The goal will be to develop this initiative's business plan over the next six months. We will incorporate the NOCHE initiative in our January workshop on Making Change