Mid-Michigan's assets can help region develop jobs

BYLINE: Jeremy W. Steele Contact Jeremy W. Steele at 377-1015 or jwsteele@lsj.com

Lansing State Journal

While mid-Michigan struggles with high unemployment rates, it also has assets that could help it surpass other regions in developing new jobs based on new technologies.

That's the take of local, state and federal officials implementing a three-year, $15 million grant given last year to a 13-county region, including Clinton, Eaton and Ingham counties.

The money, from the federal Workforce Innovation in Regional Economic Development, or WIRED, initiative, is being used to build collaborations between businesses, government programs, nonprofits and educational institutions to train workers and encourage entrepreneurship.

On Friday, officials offered an update on grant activities and efforts to encourage more innovation in the region.

Key to that transition, said David Hollister, president and chief executive officer of the Lansing-based Prima Civitas Foundation, is recognizing the region - and the state - is not simply a Rust Belt area to be ignored.

"We should be saying: 'If you want to make something or invent something, there is only one place you want to be: Michigan,' " said Hollister, a former Lansing mayor.

Prima Civitas is heading the regional effort, which spans Livingston County and the Lansing area to Michigan's Thumb, through the Mid-Michigan Innovation Team.

Hollister said Prima Civitas and other groups are having success. In late April, for instance, 19 area startup companies made pitches to venture capitalists through a program Prima Civitas started.

"There was so much demand, we're going to do it on a regular basis," said Hollister, adding there will be another meeting to connect investors and area entrepreneurs in June.

While the 13-county region needs to improve in several areas - for example, it's below the national average for workers with a bachelor's degree or higher - there are assets here other regions of the country don't have, said Randall Kempner, vice president for regional innovation at the Council on Competitiveness, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.

There's growing collaboration here between businesses, community colleges and universities to train workers and create new inventions, Kempner said.

And there are a number of promising technology-related companies that could help fill the gap from the region's lost manufacturing sector, said Matt Roush, technology editor for WJR Newsradio in Detroit and editor of the Great Lakes IT Report.

"We are growing jobs by the dozens, and sometimes by the hundreds, in lots of smaller interesting companies that all are building under the radar," Roush said.

The region, however, has to take risks to create more such small companies.

"We have been big company-dependent for so long," Roush said, "we as a society around here are so risk averse."

Contact Jeremy W. Steele at 377-1015 or jwsteele@lsj.com