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.