Ed Morrison · The connected university

May 14th, 2009

Late last month, the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts in the UK released an important report, The Connected University. You can read about the report and download it from this page.

A number of years ago, we tried to form the Universities Collaborative in Northeast Ohio. It never received the support or attention for the region’s business and philanthropic leadership that the Collaborative needed to thrive.

Is it time for the region to consider the idea again?

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2 Responses to “The connected university”

  1. cozzy Says:
    May 18th, 2009 at 7:47 pm

    Hi Ed,

    Could you shed some light on the second sentence of the second paragraph? The UC never received attention from business/leaders? Or the report did not give enough attention to the business/leaders? Any way you could provide more info on this attempt would be appreciated. Thanks!

    Cozzy

  2. Ed Morrison Says:
    May 19th, 2009 at 5:01 pm

    First, a cautionary note: The politics of economic development in Cleveland are highly charged and somewhat polarized. So, you’re only getting one perspective. Others, I’m sure, take a different view.

    Some years ago, when I was at Case Western Reserve University, a group of us engaged in economic development at the universities within the region got together to explore how we could collaborate more effectively.

    In addition to Case Western Reserve University, our group included representatives from Cleveland State University, The University of Akron, Youngstown State University, Kent State University, and Lorain County Community College.

    We formed our group around the time that the Fund for the Economic Future was forming.

    Our idea was simple. Provide the Fund with a collaborative partner. By drawing together all of the economic development resources within the colleges and universities, the region can leverage an extraordinary depth of expertise.

    We also found that the professionals working within these colleges and universities knew each other and had a long history of working together.

    To provide our network with an effective advocate, we invited Steve Minter of Cleveland State University to head our group, which we named the Universities Collaborative.

    Steve managed to get all the presidents to line up behind the Collaborative.

    We got off on the wrong foot, however, with the Fund.

    One of the first projects that the Fund was interested in was a region-wide civic engagement project. We approached the Fund to be a partner in this process and the use a highly regarded method for bringing loosely connected people together: Appreciative Inquiry.

    Developed by David Cooperrider at Case Western Reserve University, Appreciative Inquiry has been used in a variety of different contexts to focus large groups on transformative, strategic outcomes.

    (Indeed, Appreciative Inquiry is a competitive strength in the region. Virtually all of the economic development professionals in the region know about this discipline, and many of us had been certified.)

    Rather than work with us as partners, the Fund decided that the Universities Collaborative should operate as a third party vendor to the Fund.

    To implement its complex regional ambitions, the Fund chose to follow a strict bidding process with a formal Request For Proposals. The Fund advised us that we were no different that a third party consulting firm in this process.

    At the time, a number of us objected to this process. To my mind, the Fund’s leadership fundamentally misunderstood the role of a region’s colleges and universities.

    These colleges and universities are partners, not vendors to the region’s foundations. Unlike a third-party consulting firm, the region’s colleges and universities have extensive investments in the region and extensive resources to devote to economic development.

    I suggested that the arm’s-length relationship on which the Fund insisted was inappropriate to the challenges ahead. As a practical matter, we were unable to consult closely with the Fund to design a new regional civic engagement process. From its perspective, the Fund could not favor one vendor over another.

    By taking a strict, formal approach, the Fund did not benefit from the thinking that could have emerged from a closer consultation.

    The Fund went on to pick a consulting firm out of Washington DC. This firm launched a $3 million initiative, called Voices and Choices, which largely failed.

    The Universities Collaborative soon dissolved. From what I can tell, the Fund still does not have an effective partnership with the region’s colleges and universities. That’s the sad outcome to the story.