Northeast Ohio has made significant progress toward improving its economic prospects and it is encouraging to observe the energy with which a Regional Economic Strategy (RECS) is being pursued.
It is not clear, however, if everyone is yet on the same page, whether within the RECS itself, or across our chambers of commerce and the several organizations engaged in various aspects of economic development.
Indeed, despite the great efforts and the significant leadership assembled for the RECS, the emerging picture is confusingly complex and still missing some important elements necessary for success — for example, talent attraction and the role of basic and applied research and development, to name just two.
Why might this be the case? The answer is too complicated to be fully dealt with here, but one likely component is that well-meaning participants in the process know a great deal about their own industries, but little about economic development itself — a subject in which everyone easily presumes to be an expert. I suggest we need a primer on economic development.
Take a lesson
Economic development as a field has grown and evolved significantly over the last 30 years. Gone are the days when company attraction was the principal focus of a city or a region hoping to improve its economic outlook. Today, there is a much-expanded understanding of the many interacting elements that constitute a successful economic development strategy, and it is accepted that company attraction is perhaps the least important tool in the tool chest.
Today, what has emerged is subsumed under a concept of an “innovation ecosystem,” that set of interacting elements that enable us to create wealth and advance our standard of living. The principal elements of such a system are talent, investment and infrastructure, each of which has multiple components needing to be contextually examined, enhanced and connected to the others so as to optimize the success of the whole.
Bigger picture
Indeed, disconnections among the many interacting elements of an innovation ecosystem are some of the biggest impediments to economic growth. When key components of the system are isolated, the synergies that can result from their working together cannot bring about desired results. Also, if we do not identify weak or missing components, we will fail to capture our full economic potential.
Collectively, we need a common base of working knowledge. We need to understand what is working and what is not. We need to know what is missing and what needs to be enhanced. We need to know how to connect various resources to optimize our chances for success.
As I noted, a good place to begin is by examining the roles of R&D and talent attraction. Even better, let us first offer ourselves the benefit of a primer on economic development.
