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Two hundred civic leaders in Dayton met this week to review their strategic options.The summit focused on the connection of education to economic development.

In the Product Innovation and Commercialization group, Ireland native Eugene Peden gave a fiery speech comparing Dayton to his homeland.

“I look at this region, and I see a great parallel to Ireland,” said Peden, vice president of operations at PECO II, a telecommunications power equipment and service provider.

Peden said like the Dayton region, Ireland was heavily dependant on the manufacturing industry, but has emerged as one of the fasted growing economies in the world because of a strong educational system.

The strong educational system allowed the country to change gears and flourish in emerging industries, which is exactly the point the summit was hoping to make with regional leaders.

“Be afraid, be very afraid, but let’s have that fear energize us,” Peden said.

Wise advice. Read more.

E-mail from the Governor's office in Idaho:

The Governor will be rolling out Project 60 in a more definitive and high-profile way on Thursday when he addresses the Boise Metro Chamber of Commerce. It will be the Governor’s signature economic development initiative, embodying his core principle of Enhancing Economic Opportunity.
 
PROJECT 60: Governor Otter has set a goal of expanding the gross state product of Idaho from its current $51 billion to $60 billion by the time he leaves office. We are calling it “Project 60,” and it will be integrated into all that we do in terms of economic development and job creation.
 
  Important points to remember:

• Just because Idaho has fared somewhat better than most other states during the recent economic downturn, we are not resting on the laurels of our unprecedented 20 years of growth. Complacency is a recipe for disaster, so we are aggressively attacking our challenges on a number of fronts under the Project 60 banner. Think of it as a business plan for Idaho, around which we will be focusing many of our public policy initiatives.
• Part of that involves working with community and industry leaders throughout Idaho to complete public infrastructure projects that facilitate expansion. That includes improving our roads, highways and bridges and facilitating energy transmission.
• We also are working on recruitment of people with special skills, including engineers and computer scientists needed by companies looking to grow and expand.
• And we are working on a regional technology transfer protocol. Its goal is encouraging innovative new companies to take root and create jobs from the research being conducted at our universities and the Idaho National Laboratory.
• Finally, the weak dollar has provided an excellent platform from which to expand our international exports and our presence in the global marketplace. We are AGGRESSIVELY pursuing the international market on three fronts: foreign direct investment, such as that being made by French-owned AREVA; raising foreign investment capital for start-up of new innovation companies and support of growing companies; and expanding exports and trade, including recruitment of businesses from Canada and elsewhere for our available labor and very competitive operating costs.

Here's a good commentary on innovation from one of the state leaders in Maine. She focuses on the importance of translating ideas into a practical polcy agenda.

She skates along the high points of a complex topic, but she is focusing on one of the core issues facing economic development: accelerating innovation.
Read more.

The public policy challenge, of course, involves transforming legacy economic and workforce development programs -- many of which are rooted in the 1930's -- into policies appropriate for an economy in which open innovation networks drive prosperity.

The Pollicy Challenge

Most of our economic development policies are geared toward an industrial recruitment model. Over twenty years, globalization has gradually made this strategy less productive...and largely obsolete.

Now we need policy strategies that more flexible approaches to 1) transforming education through innovation; 2) integrating education and workforce development with economic development and 3) accelerating innovation through open networks driven by regional strategies.

The Business Challenge

At the same time, busisses face their own set of challenges. Here's a good summary from a former top executive at IBM. Read more.

Ohio is trying to move its university system center stage in its economic transformation. Next week, the Chancellor of the Ohio Board of Regents will be unveiling a new strategic plan for the state's 13 public universities  and 23 community colleges.

Here's an overview of what will be announced next week. Read more.

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.

Elgin, Illinois is in the midst of implementing a comprehensive retail strategy. The key components of the strategy are laid out in an article here. 

One of the key components of retail strategy is to identify where the "leakage" is taking place in your economy. Retail leakage takes place when consumers shop outside your community or region. The stragey involves identifying these leaks and providfing retail alternatieves, so they will shop inside your economy.

Reducing retail leakage accelerates the velocity of money in your economy and increases, in the economists' term,  your "multiplier". 

There is another important principle at work here. By plugging the leaks you have an opportunity to enhance the local character of your economy. Local, independent retailers  build the personality of your economy and create the unique character that can serve as a magnet for outsiders.

Arguably, local retailers also have stronger ties to the local economy and enhance the multiplier effect. (This topic is controversial, beacuse it often touches on locating, recruiting and giving incentives to "big box" retailers. Here are a couple of websites that explore the issue: here and here.)

To learn more about plugging the "leaks" in your economy, check out this website from the UK.

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.

Here's a white paper on Strategic Doing. We've also launched a new web site on Strategic Doing, where we will be collecting stories, tools and insights into how to do strategy in open networks.

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.)

Here's an overview of of what the KY Cabinet for Economic Development has been up to through its Department of Commercialization and Innovation.

[T]he state has funded $114 million worth of technology projects, programs and infrastructure since 2001, when her office was formed...About $16 million in development assistance has been awarded to 32 companies. That number is "fairly low because up until 2005, the effort was really focusing on building incubators," such as Louisville's MetaCyte Business Lab, and "supporting academic programs that ultimately would spin out companies," [Deborah Clayton, commissioner of the state's Department of Commercialization and Innovation] said. "In 2005 we made a shift to focus more on companies."

Read more.

William Winter, a former governor of Mississippi, stands as an inspirational leader both for his state and country.

Recently, the 85-year-old former governor shared his thoughts on the history and prospects of Northeast Mississippi. His comments remind us that economic development is not a destination, but a journey.

Read more.