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Ed Morrison · Some promising approaches to leveraging universities in NEO
November 19th, 2011
Some articles that demonstrate the new direction that economic development is taking in NEO:
Neomed seeks partnerships to benefit region Blackstone Charitable Foundation and Burton D. Morgan Foundation Commit $3.2 Million to Train Ohio’s Next Generation of Entrepreneurs
Focusing on entrepreneurship and innovation on university campuses creates a new regional dynamic. Here’s a view from the Miami Launchpad that serves as a model for the Blackstone Launchpad in NEO.
You can see this dynamic playing out in the Accelerate Michigan Innovation Competition this week. Or the Global Student Entrepreneurship Awards.
Supporting student entrepreneurs is an important part of the Kauffman Foundation’s Global Entrepreneurship Week.
Ed Morrison · Developing an agile strategy process in the Tampa Bay region
November 18th, 2011
The Tampa Bay Partnership is working on an impressive regional strategy. They have charted some possibilities for the future, and now they are turning to implementation.
Today, I made a presentation to the Partnership’s annual meeting. I explored how we evolved a new strategy discipline for open networks, the type of networks we need to develop and manage in the “civic space” within our regional economies.
Here’s the slide deck I used. 
Today, I made a presentation to the Partnership’s annual meeting. I explored how we evolved a new strategy discipline for open networks, the type of networks we need to develop and manage in the “civic space” within our regional economies.
Here’s the slide deck I used.
Ed Morrison · Colorado’s Blueprint
November 13th, 2011
Colorado has gone through an extensive process to develop a statewide strategy. Called the Colorado Blueprint, the governor positions his approach as a “bottom up” strategy.
You can learn more from the web site.
Ed Morrison · Bloomberg’s new state index
November 13th, 2011
Bloomberg released a new state-level index at a municipal bond conference last week. Surprisingly, the states ranked 1 and 2 are North Dakota and Michigan.
The release led Michigan’s governor to broadcast that a new day was dawning in his state.
Bloomberg had a slightly different take: the results underscore the importance of the auto industry.
Here’s the presentation Bloomberg provided.
Ed Morrison · New York’s regional strategies | The Buffalo perspective
November 13th, 2011
Governor Cuomo has launched a statewide economic development strategy based on a competition among ten regions in the state. The regions are due to submit their strategies to the State in a few days.
From what is available so far, Western New York has developed a clear approach with key attributes of a successful strategy: a strong narrative, a limited number of strategic focal points and measurable outcomes.
You can read more about the strategy from Buffalo Rising.
Ed Morrison · Update from our Strategic Doing Design Team
November 11th, 2011
Every six months, a group of practitioners from across the country convene in Indiana to advance the discipline and practice of Strategic Doing. This week, about 20 gathered to develop the “infrastructure” we need to advance this discipline nationally.
This new civic infrastructure includes a variety of components: a new professional certification in the discipline; a national network of colleges, universities and others supporting the discipline; a research and evaluation framework to enable us to advance the knowledge of conducting strategy within open networks; the development of new tools to advance the practice; the design of a learning network to accelerate support among practitioners.
Why do we have an expanding core of people committed to this work?
Here’s a summary of points that tie our Strategic Doing Design Team together:
- With the problems we’re continuing to experience across our country, it has become apparent that traditional ways of solving complex problems in the civic space are no longer effective.
- These traditional ways lack a disciplined approach that is firmly rooted in sound strategic thinking.
- Strategic Doing brings the missing strategy and execution discipline to the civic space.
- The Strategic Doing discipline requires a broader, deeper body of knowledge to support it and ensure that it has predictive value and proves to be both reliable and effective.
We also come together as a team with some common beliefs:
- We believe we have a responsibility to build a prosperous, sustainable future for ourselves and future generations.
- No individual, organization or place can build that future alone.
- Open, honest, focused and caring collaboration among diverse participants is the path to accomplishing clear, valuable, shared outcomes.
- We believe in doing, not just talking -– and in behaving in alignment with our beliefs.
We follow the discipline in these sessions to design an agile strategy with clear outcomes for the next 180 days. Not everyone in our design team can meet each time, but Strategic Doing enables us to advance our strategy each session without sliding backwards.
Our design team includes people from the following states: Maine, Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Nebraska, Louisiana, Maryland, Iowa, Missouri, California, South Carolina, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Jersey, and Alaska. Purdue and Michigan State are anchoring the initial network. Representatives include private sector companies, economic and workforce development organizations, and college and university professionals involved in regional engagement. We have team members with the perspective of rural communities, multi-county regions, and inner cities.
This week, we organized ourselves into the following teams: research and evaluation; the national network; tools and practices. Here is one group focused on improving the tools we use in Strategic Doing. Janyce Fadden, a former manufacturing CEO and now head of Rockford’s economic development organization, leads the discussion.
Ed Morrison · Don’t hold us back: Lessons for CLE from LA?
November 6th, 2011
Interesting developments taking place in Los Angeles, where an unusual coalition of groups has come together to push for much more aggressive school reform.
Ed Morrison · Defining investment priorities for regional innovation clusters
October 27th, 2011
One of the major challenges in developing regional innovation clusters comes in defining and setting priorities for collaborative investments.
Here’s a simple solution.
Have participants in the cluster rank investment options according to two dimensions: one on return, one on risk.
For each investment option, ask participants two questions:
- First, how big an impact is the co-imvestment likely to have? Rank on a five point scale (1= low; 5 = high)
- Second, how difficult will this co-investment likely to be to implement? Rank on a five point scale (1= easy; 5 = hard)
Here’s a simple graphic you can use to rank your alternatives. Remember, these investment rankings change over time. As you learn more about an investment alternative, your assessments of risk and return will shift. That’s the essence of conducting an agile strategy in an open network: embedding new learning and insights into continuous strategic assessments.
Ed Morrison · It’s about time to measure the effectiveness of state and local tax expenditures to create jobs
October 25th, 2011
My colleague and friend Valdis Krebs, an internationally recognized expert in social network analysis, has mapped taxpayer funding to corporations in Ohio.
You can see a larger version here.
These types of maps can be useful as we focus on the existing pot of “incentives”, which may not be all that effective.
For years we have known that state tax incentives to corporations are not a very effective way to generate jobs. The reason is simple: State taxes represent a small percentage of the total cost structure to corporations. Reducing these rates has little impact on a company’s long term competitive position, and, worse still, it puts state legislators in the business of “picking winners and losers”.
Most of the Ohio incentives mapped by Valdis represent tax expenditures — largely unmonitored spending through the tax code. The concept of tax expenditures, first developed by Assistant Treasury Secretary Stanley Surrey in 1967, provides a useful lens through which to evaluate unwatched subsidies to corporations.
Now, with fiscal austerity staring down state and local governments, people are starting to examine these “incentives” more carefully. In the end, they at most, are a tool to move companies from one state to another. From a national (global) point of view, these policies are don’t do much (except create employment for accountants, tax lawyers, and site selection consultants).
Here’s a report out of Florida this week:
Florida tax incentive programs creating 1 out of every 3 jobs promised
And a view from Missouri:
ANALYSIS: States rethinking tax credits as job creation tool
The better approach: Eliminate these business tax expenditures, broaden the base, reduce rates, and simplify.
Ed Morrison · Suggestions for how to manage tax increment financing (TIFs)
October 24th, 2011
A new report from the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (USPIRG) suggests several ways in which the use of Tax Increment Financing districts (TIFs) can be refocused so that
they are more effective.
Among the suggestions: TIFs should be focused in limited areas for specific development objectives and made as temporary as possible.
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