Investment Priorities for a Stronger Northeast Ohio Economy

The region's major foundations will gather today to discuss ideas and strategies to help them better target their funding to serve the economic development needs of local communities and the region.

Earlier this year they agreed to try to work together in forwarding a consolidated regional economic development agenda. Today many of the area's foundations, from the largest to the smallest, will meet to further their thinking and priorities.

Likely immediate term prospects for help are new entrepreneurship efforts by the Northeast Ohio Technology Coalition (NorTech) and some new innovation initiatives to spark more technology business development across the region. These are worthy priorities, provided they are organized and undertaken in the right way. Whatever is done in this area must give full recognition to new global economic realities and it must relate to the needs of established and emerging industries alike. There is other work to be done, which I describe below.

First, as an editorial comment, I agree with this joint effort and I believe private philanthropic should play a stronger and better defined role in stimulating greater entrepreneurship, innovation, and broader based prosperity across the region. This job will not be easy, given the region's slippage over the past decade or more. Plus, external competition is much stronger, which speaks to the need for innovative initiatives that allow regions across Ohio and in other states to collaborate on common objectives. To achieve the latter priority, we need to assess what regions across Europe have been doing to promote exchanges, interactions and joint action for regional economic improvement. The Innovating Regions in Europe (IRE) makes sense.

Here is a set of priorities, which hopefully foundation executives and their board members will give consideration to as they look at the future:

1. The Cleveland part of the NEO region needs to get over its "hangover" from the failed convention center development effort. My recommendation is for Cleveland officials to work with their counterparts in other cities trying to build large convention and sports facilities and roll these projects into a real estate investment trust (REIT)--at least to raise the funding for these projects, and perhaps also their management.

2. The Cleveland part of the region also needs to come to resolution about how it will refocus the resources of Cleveland Tomorrow, the Growth Association and the Greater Cleveland Roundtable. My recommendation is to look seriously at the Pittsburgh Regional Alliance's "holding company model," which appears to be working quite well.

3. Manufacturing is the tie that binds all the metros within the NEO region. We need a cross-cutting action strategy and roadmap that improves our competitive position for growing industry cluster-based manufacturing, small and medium-sized manufacturing companies that are locally owned and manufacturing companies that are growth-oriented in general. Do away with the "old versus new economy" distinction and embrace an integrated model that sees manufacturing as a vibrant and vital component of the emerging knowledge economy.

4. Craft a human capital strategy that: effectively deals with the issues of talent retention and attraction; helps companies here manage "globally networked" workforces; and connects NEO labor and jobs to the new emerging "international division of labor." This strategy should actively involve area colleges and universities and advance their ability to create and develop talent for the region.

5. Move forward with a focused, but aggressive, region-wide marketing strategy that positions the region in a realistic way with business investors locally, nationally and globally. The centerpiece of this strategy should be strategic customer relationship development.

6. Work on competitive site development in all NEO counties. In my assessment, we are lacking in this basic area. We still do not have an adequate supply of ready sites to accommodate future business expansion across the region. We need a strategy to guide that effort so we do not saturate the market with too much supply at once.

7. Get Team NEO up and running--but do it in a sensible way. So far, the effort has stumbled for a variety of reasons--not the least of which is the inability to attract the right professional to spearhead the organization. Team NEO will need time and a lot of help to grow into a productive role as a regional arm that stretches across the region's many metro areas. My suggestion is to look closely at the Greater Phoenix Economic Council (GPEC) as a best practice model for building Team NEO.

8. Finally, NEO needs to create the next generation of leaders for economic development. This is both a board and staff consideration. New "team leadership models" should be explored that bring together both established (existing) and emerging (new) leaders to work together on the challenges described above. Set aside the old linear model of leadership transition in favor of a more dynamic one that encourages "inter-generational" leadership for economic development.

This is no small agenda, and there is no guarantee that if the region does these things it will be any better off tomorrow than it is today. I'm not going to lie to you. There is a risk, and a significant one from what I can tell. How do we mitigate this risk? The answer is through the design and implementation of a carefully designed performance monitoring and measurement system that informs leadership, economic development professionals and the general public on an ongoing basis how well the overall economic development system and the individual organizations and programs comprising it are working. Think "team effort" and "team results."

In conclusion, hope that the current economic recovery continues and that American businesses will see communities like those in Northeast Ohio as the future places they will do business.