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.