Category Archives: Community

Hometown Advantage with a “D”

People from Detroit call their hometown the “D.” The reason at first appears obvious—Detroit, the letter D—it’s straightforward.  But below the surface, that single letter represents so much more.  Walking around the city center, it’s impossible to miss the Diverse city culture.  Artists and foodies intermingle with suits rushing from one meeting to the next.  [...]
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Economy, Place, and Public Radio

“The Economy.” The phrase suggests one economy – as if our experiences of markets and the forces that shape them are universal. But we experience different economies, based on the industries in which we work, the particular jobs we hold, the communities in which we live, and our own unique circumstances. Some people have suffered [...]
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Rock Stars, Regions & Resilience

Rock Stars It’s funny how, depending on the lens you use, certain people can become your own personal rock star.  I recently attended an International Economic Development Council (IEDC) event in Texas.  I was pulling all of my best networking moves and finally decided I needed to take a break and actually “listen” to one [...]
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Getting Strategic About Skills

NOTE: This is the third in our recent “let’s share the findings from all those OECD reports with each other (and the world)” series. Again, the content is not likely scintillating, but it’s important to us, and we’re happy to let you in on it. The OECD Designing Local Skills Strategies Report (2009) focuses largely [...]
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Economic Transformation in Northeastern Ohio

Promising Practices in Regional Economic Development: Northeast Ohio Last week, I attended an event focused on the importance of regional planning, partnerships between government, workforce, education, and economic development, and how encouraging entrepreneurship in regions can help spur economic growth and prevent further population loss. My own organization, Corporation for a Skilled Workforce (CSW), has [...]
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Workers or Jobs: Which Comes First?

Training vs. Jobs In communities across the country where unemployment is especially high, leaders and policy makers urge workers to upgrade their skills and search for employment in new and growing industries – like wind energy. But often, the jobs aren’t there yet. Better Bridges Between Economic and Workforce Development Yes, the world is getting [...]
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The Power of Connecting

Smart Communities Connect, Share, and Drive from Data At the risk of making this post feel like an ad, I embedded “The Way We Work” above. The video clearly explains (from an enterprise perspective) the same theory of change we’re trying to advance from a community perspective – how connecting us to each and to [...]
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Revisiting Our Community Agility Ecosystem

What’s Community Agility? Two years ago – when we launched the Community Initiatives Team – agility was on ours minds. Pre-recession, we were hearing flat, but seeing spiky. Our team members live and work in regions as diverse as Portland (OR), Tucson (AZ), Charlotte (NC), and all over Michigan. So while the U.S. economy at [...]
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