Brewed Fresh Daily

Beginning in the 1970s, with the significant reduction of trade barriers, the forces of globalization began to reshape the Great Lakes economy deeply.  Waves of foreign competition hit the Great Lakes in key industrial sectors: autos, steel, appliances and machine tools. The sudden contraction and closure of major industrial plants branded the region as the Rust Belt. 

In recent years, a new appreciation of the strengths of the Great Lakes region is emerging among civic leaders and policy analysts. In 2006, the Brookings Institution published a seminal report: The  Vital Center: A  Federal–State Compact to Renew the Great Lakes Region.  The report implores leaders  to think more broadly, more ambitiously about  the region’s economic strengths.   The report went on to suggest a clear starting point: business development in water related industries.

“With its unique water assets and existing industrial and research base in energy, chemicals, transportation, and new materials, the Great Lakes region can also be the nation’s leader in new technologies, processes and business opportunities in “clean” technologies. These include water pollution abatement technologies, as well as those dependent on freshwater (e.g., Biotech, aquaculture, water conservation, and water prevention technologies). These developments would both serve the national interest and accelerate the region’s economic transformation.” (The Vital Center, page 35).

The Brookings report is taking hold. By 2009, executives from metropolitan chambers of commerce called for leveraging the assets within the Great Lakes region “by supporting business development and research opportunities compatible with freshwater technology and water–based development.” (An Agenda for Jobs and Economic Transformation in the Great Lakes Region, Page 2).  In the same year, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago’s Detroit Branch hosted a conference on the  role of fresh water in the economic future the Great Lakes.

Milwaukee was first out of the blocks to explore the development of a water cluster. Conversations began in 2007. By mid-2008, a formal organization, The Milwaukee Water Council, launched with a clear strategic agenda  to become a global center for water development. About the same time, the Michigan Economic Development Corporation launched its water cluster initiative.    Earlier this year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency combined with the Small Business Administration to announce a new Water Technology Innovation Cluster, based in Cincinnati. Last month, Dayton held its second annual Dayton Water Conference. 

Across the region, other centers of water related technology and business development are emerging. In Northwestern Indiana, the Purdue Calumet Water Institute is partnering with Argonne National Labs and British Petroleum on a project to reduce industrial pollutants in the Great Lakes. In Northeast Ohio, civic leaders have cataloged assets that could help them form a water cluster with historically one of the largest concentrations of chemists in the world, as well as ongoing research within its universities.

Within the Great Lakes region, the emerging centers of water activity include:

These developments can be accelerated even faster with a new collaborative network that connects these emerging water clusters.  Building this type collaborative network will improve the competitiveness of the Great Lakes region. Researchers, entrepreneurs and investors will be able to identify valuable assets faster, link and leverage these assets faster, and respond to opportunities faster.

Collaboration has emerged as the new competitive advantage. Building networks of compatible clusters represents a low cost approach to accelerating the development of regional innovation clusters. The National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) has proven that this strategy accelerates business development.  

In 2000, NREL launched a highly successful national network of clean energy business incubators.  The network provides clean energy businesses with an array of business and financial resources. The network of 23 clean energy incubators feeds a highly successful annual NREL Industry Growth Forum. More recently, NASA has been evaluating  a network of clean clusters that are emerging in clean energy around NASA facilities in Texas, Colorado and Florida.   

These types of networks are also forming at the state level with international partners. To speed business development, a number of states are connecting their clusters with complementary clusters in other countries.  BioCity Nottingham, a facility in the United Kingdom, has built an international network of partners in life sciences. Earlier this month, Akron, Ohio announced a new relationship with an innovation center in Israel to develop a pipeline of biomedical device opportunities. Massachusetts recently signed a memorandum of understanding to tie its biotechnology cluster to a similar cluster in the United Kingdom.  California is exploring cluster collaborations with China  with clean energy.  

A university-based network of water clusters in the Great Lakes can accelerate research collaborations and business development in water technologies.  We are starting to explore what such a network might look like.