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Yesterday, I spent the day with a team of researchers and practitioners from Indiana University, the Purdue Center for Regional Development, and the University of Missouri.

We have teamed with two private companies, Strategic Development Group and Economic Modeling Specialists.

Together, we are woprking on a new set of tools for regions to accelerate their economies through innovation. Yesterday, we viewed the tools together, and it was quite exciting to see how these tools are evolving.

They should be ready for prime time in a few months. We'll preview them to the economic development community at the Economic Development Institute's session in Indianapolis in December.

The growth of network-based models continues. Here's an article from Western North Carolina. It seems that Asheville and Buncombe County are moving toward a network based approach to their regional strategy. They have launched an intiative to map regional economic development assets. You can read more here.

Sam Powers is adopting some of the frameworks developed by I-Open, our nonprofit organization that is dedicated to spreading these network based models. You can read a white paper on these new approaches here. Sam uses the language of the white paper to explain why networks are important.

Regions that have thick, open networks will be more prosperous, Powers predicts: They will learn faster, spot their opportunities faster, align their resources faster and act faster.

Here's a good commentary from Northern Colorado. The author does a good job summarizing how the dynamics of economic development have shifted and why innovation and regional collaboration iare so critically important.

In the face of growing global competition, the only sustainable advantage for U.S. regions will be continuous innovation, according to research conducted by the Council on Competitiveness.

Innovation is the process by which individuals, companies, regions and even entire countries remake themselves in the face of changing markets.

It is the driver of productivity growth and, ultimately, of a rising standard of living.

For more than a decade, reputable organizations have studied how regions become more innovative, thus poised to be globally competitive. They share the belief that an economy is no longer defined by the political boundaries of a city, county or state.

This regional concept promotes partnerships among key community players, including K-12 districts, community colleges, universities, lifelong learning centers, regional primary employers, work force centers and economic development organizations.

Read more.

The Economic Development Administration and Western Carolina University have teamed to produce a useful web site: Know Your Region.

There are a range of helpful materials on the site. Here's an example: a short presentation on defining a region.

Western Carolina has also developed a curriculum on regionalism. I'm currently reviewing it to see how we can integrate the material into different WIRED initiatives  and the advanced strategic planning courses at OU/EDI. 

A promising new regional partnership is forming in southeast Arizona. The Southeast Arizona Economic Development Group includes a wide range of constituencies form the public, private and education sector.

The group is designed to coordinate economic development activities in Cochise County. A founding member notes: "SAEDG's primary goal is to bring opportunities to cities in Cochise County that have never been represented before aqnd become an economic development "one stop" for the entire county".

You can read more about the new group here .

You can visit their web site here.

This morning, we launched a new web site for Bioscience Regions . You can visit the site here. 

If you are on-line right now, you can listen to our audio channel here.  

Bioscience Regions is a spin-out of our Wired Nation site.  We will be spinning out new regions in Clean Energy and Advanced Manufacturing in March. 

Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to sit down with Cleveland Public Radio's Dan Moulthrop to discuss Cleveland's efforts to brand the region of Northeast Ohio.

You can listen to our discussion below. I later connected our conversation to some slides. 

"The dynamics are changing. We live in a global economy, so we have to function in a global economy. The idea of Rock County competing with Dean County... it just doesn't work that way anymore."