Brewed Fresh Daily

Here’s an example of what we are doing at the Purdue Center for Regional Development on Florida’s Space Coast, in the wake of the Shuttle shutdown. 

Agility is key to forming new networks and recovering from large layoffs. We have developed agile strategy disciplines appropriate for complex collaborations in loosely joined networks. Read more about our work on the Space Coast. 

By teaching new approaches to strategy in open networks, we have activated new regional innovation clusters in a matter of months. This happens, because we quickly focus sophisticated collaborations on measurable outcomes and next steps. This video explains the beginning of the process in the Space Coast in April 2010. 

The Space Coast Energy Consortium formed quickly — within two months. Based on the disciplines of Strategic Doing, the cluster leaders quickly designed a strategy agenda and began executing. The slide pack explains this fast “design build” cycle for activating clusters.  

We learned the value of agile strategies by dealing with the challenges of restructuring the auto industry. By deploying sophisticated collaborations quickly, we guided the Kokomo economy into new directions, This video tells the story. 

Here’s an example of what we are doing at the Purdue Center for Regional Development on Florida’s Space Coast, in the wake of the Shuttle shutdown. 

Agility is key to forming new networks and recovering from large layoffs. We have developed agile strategy disciplines appropriate for complex collaborations in loosely joined networks. Read more about our work on the Space Coast. 

By teaching new approaches to strategy in open networks, we have activated new regional innovation clusters in a matter of months. This happens, because we quickly focus sophisticated collaborations on measurable outcomes and next steps. This video explains the beginning of the process in the Space Coast in April 2010. 

The Space Coast Energy Consortium formed quickly — within two months. Based on the disciplines of Strategic Doing, the cluster leaders quickly designed a strategy agenda and began executing. The slide pack explains this fast “design build” cycle for activating clusters.  

We learned the value of agile strategies by dealing with the challenges of restructuring the auto industry. By deploying sophisticated collaborations quickly, we guided the Kokomo economy into new directions, This video tells the story. 

You can read more about the new innovation center here. 

Korea is making impressive strides in establishing a global leadership in green technologies. A year ago, the government established the Global Green Institute. In May, Denmark — another leader in decoupling economic growth from carbon-based energy consumption — became a partner in the Institute. 

Last week, at the first Global Green Growth Summit with the OECD, Korea’s President Lee Myung-bak announced that the government would form a Green Technology Center and a Global Green Technology Award to help nations move toward a “green growth” era. 

You can learn more about Korea’s activities here and here. 

You can visit the web site of the Global Green Institute. 

That’s the conclusion of a new report from Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce. Written by Anthony Carnevale, leading authority on the role education plays in our economy, the report offers some sobering conclusions. 

In addition, the data provide some interesting insights into the development of clean energy projects in rural parts of the state.

At the Purdue Center for Regional Development, we are working to evolve more agile planning models under some HUD sustainability and Choice Neighborhood grants. 

So far, this much is clear to me: HUD’s staff is more project or transaction driven, and they have little experience thinking in a longer term strategic or systems context. So, the feds are not likely going to provide much guidance on these new models. 

Second, “logic models” — a primary tool used by the Feds and foundations to evaluate a potential investment — tend to be too simple to capture the complexities of a sustainable economy, which calls for a systems mindset. 

Third, we will need to experiment with new, agile planning approaches, because the traditional, linear planning models are inadequate for building sustainable communities. They are too liner, slow, inflexible and costly. 

The challenge we face involves developing agile, open processes that are guided by experienced collaborative leaders. Balancing open participation and leadership guidance seems to me to be at the heart of what we need to do. 

Finally, we need some simple simple rules to guide us. We need to design a flexible, light-weight, and continuous “planning and doing” process. We cannot manage complexity with a complex planning process. 

These simple rules will enable us to develop clear metrics that have meaning for our communities. Our simple rules should encourage experimentation.  Metrics in a sustainable economy will play a different role than metrics in an industrial economy. 

In an industrial economy, metrics (and the impulse to measure everyone by the same yardstick, e.g., jobs) emphasize control and undercut experimentation. In a sustainable economy — an economy reliant on flexible, adaptive networks — metrics provide a critical tool for learning and evaluation to figure out “what works”. 

We are gaining some other interesting insights. In sustainable development, value creation takes place at two levels. First, value creation emerges as civic organizations develop more sophisticated collaborations. This idea is explored in Steven Goldsmith’s new book, The Power of Social innovation. So, for example, a neighborhood takes a step toward a more sustainable economy if leaders connect career pathways from high schools to entrepreneurs in an emerging cluster, like urban food businesses. 

At a second level of value creation, urban design and planning guides the development of a built environment that supports and amplifies these collaborations. The neighborhood, for example, can create additional shared value by turning a vacant warehouse into a food business accelerator with high energy and water efficiency. A new “learning center” within the accelerator serves as a food processing center for product development, an entrepreneurship and technician training center, and retail distribution hub. 

Value creation comes first from organizational collaboration and, next, from integrating these collaborations into the design for a flexible built environment that reduces the environmental costs and creates new opportunities for turning waste to profit.  

We are focused now on integrating the disciplines of Strategic Doing into these new, agile planning models. 

Some other observations: Sustainable development requires us to develop “portfolios of collaborative investment”.  Managing this portfolio involves initiating pilot projects, experiments that “link and leverage” assets across organizational and political boundaries. (Connecting high school career guidance with entrepreneurial start-ups is an example.) 

To build sustainable, resilient economies, we need to place a lot of small bets. These experiments need to be scaled, based on an evaluation of what’s working. Our metrics will help us evaluate and learn. No single experiment should be so big that its failure will destroy our agile planning process. In other words, we need to manage the downside of each experiment by asking “What could go wrong?”  At the same time, embracing our failures will accelerate our learning. So, the agile planning process needs to be open, transparent, and continuous. In building sustainable communities, the civic process for developing and launching collaborative investments is what matters. 

You can read more about the background of their report here.