Regional Efforts in Southeast Michigan Leads to Shared Impact Report

Rallying the myriad local organizations, chambers of commerce and political jurisdictions of any large metropolitan area toward a shared economic development agenda is challenging. To twist a phrase from supply-side economics, the “trickle around” theory of benefits – when any major economic development project occurs in one community will have spillover benefits for the entire region – is a tough sell to communities and school systems trying to keep their budgets in the black.
 
True success most likely requires radical transformation of several institutions, consolidated tax and revenue sharing systems, and fundamental shifts in one's sense of belonging to a particular place.
 
That last element, shifting the sense of belonging to a larger region, is a regular challenge for watershed management systems, which, among their other responsibilities, try to get the residents of a particular area to realize the watershed ignores the arbitrarily drawn political jurisdictions we create. We all live upstream and/or downstream from somewhere else and are affected by the activities occurring in those other places.
 
Similar efforts are required for regional transformation toward improved economic competitiveness. Detroit Renaissance, a private nonprofit organization composed “exclusively of the chief executive officers of the region’s most significant employers and largest universities,” is attempting to help define Southeast Michigan as a single regional economy.
 
In actuality, it already is one economy, so in theory the project should be relatively easy. Its institutions to support and encourage innovation, however, have historically not seen it that way – in Michigan or elsewhere in the country.
 
One of the approaches Detroit Renaissance used was the creation of the Economic Development Coalition of Southeast Michigan last November. This week, the group released an “annual report” summarizing and highlighting the collective impact of 13 local, county, metro and state economic development organizations serving in the region. The group’s members include tech-based economic development organizations such as Ann Arbor SPARK, Automation Alley and TechTown, conventional business recruitment and retention efforts such as the Detroit Economic Growth Corporation, and a tourism board to several county and regional planning groups.
 
Individually, their annual reports may not gather much attention. Collected in the single report for 2007, however, the results are more impressive: 16,610 new jobs created and 9,552 jobs retained. New investment into the region totaled $4 billion through 117 different projects. One subtle or possible result of the report is to help journalists, the individual member organizations, their client businesses, and residents of the area to transform their definition of "place" to one that is more encompassing of the broader Southeast Michigan region.
 
More information about the report is available at: http://www.detroitrenaissance.com
 
Encouraging Regional Innovation
Achieving an integrated systems approach toward regional innovation support is the underlying theme of SSTI’s annual conference this year, which will be held at the Intercontinental Hotel in Cleveland, Oct. 14-16, 2008. The overwhelming value of attending the premiere TBED conference of the year is becoming well known -- registrations are ahead of last year’s event, which sold out. More information is available at www.ssticonference.org.