Blueprint for Growth: the WIRED Program
By Teri Fritsma
March 2009
PDF of article (4 pages)
Participants in the WIRED program — a federally funded initiative designed to stimulate economic development in southern Minnesota — will follow a precise blueprint in planning their strategy.
These days, everyone is talking about the changes brought about by globalization. Integrated markets. Foreign competition. Technological advances. Outsourced jobs. A leveled playing field.
Yet even with the focus on the large-scale and the global, experts recognize that competition starts where workers and industries meet — locally. To compete globally, it is the local region that must grapple with decisions about how to harness resources and fill gaps. This is a challenge for any area, but is especially daunting for those with declining industries, limited natural resources or aging populations.
In November 2005, the U.S. Department of Labor Employment and Training Administration announced an initiative to help regions pursue creative approaches to economic development. The Workforce Innovation in Regional Economic Development (WIRED) program offers competitive funding to regions that demonstrate both the need and the capacity for economic renewal. Currently in its third round of funding, the WIRED program has awarded grants to 39 regions nationally. Minnesota was among the latest group, receiving $5 million to develop a renewable energy marketplace in a triangle-shaped, 36-county region in southwestern, south-central and west-central Minnesota.
How WIRED is supposed to work is highlighted in a resource called “Blueprint for Talent Development.” This article looks at this guide for planning, implementing and evaluating economic development.
Blueprint for Talent Development
Older economic development models emphasized competition between states, counties or other areas divided by traditional geo-political boundaries. By contrast, WIRED focuses on shared regional assets and how those assets can be mined and combined in new ways to foster innovation. At the center of the WIRED framework is talent. Developing talent means more than training workers to meet current market demand; it means thinking creatively and strategically about how to cultivate local skills that can mix with other community resources to drive innovation and economic transformation.
The “Blueprint for Talent Development” guides economic developers through a step-by-step process. The six steps are as follows:
- Identify the regional economy.
- Form a core leadership group.
- Identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT).
- Develop a regional identity.
- Devise strategies for regional economic and workforce development.
- Leverage resources and implement.
Step 1: Identifying the Regional Economy
The first step involves identifying the region’s boundaries. The region need not be a traditional metropolitan statistical area, workforce investment area or any other area defined by conventional geo-political boundaries. Instead, it should be any set of communities that share certain resources or assets. For example, a farming community near a higher education institution and an ethanol plant might constitute a region ripe for transformation and revitalization.
Step 2: Form a Core Leadership Group
The second step involves forming a leadership group. The group should include people from:
- Economic and workforce development
- Educational institutions
- Business
- Research and development institutions
- Government
- Investment firms or philanthropic groups
- Trade or labor groups
- Faith-based groups
In some cases, formal or informal partnerships may already exist and can form the basis of the group. In other cases, partnerships may need to be finessed. In all cases, though, there should be flexibility. The group should be able to contract or expand to accommodate the regional vision as it develops and changes.
Step 3: Perform a SWOT Analysis
The SWOT analysis is an in-depth look at the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats in the region that will directly affect economic development strategies. This step is critical, and for some it is the most challenging part of the WIRED process. SWOT analysis involves reviewing government data sources, including economic, educational and demographic information. A thorough SWOT analysis might also require conducting original research such as surveys, focus groups or interviews of businesses, universities and other stakeholders.
During a SWOT analysis, the following dimensions should be considered:
- Natural resources and climate
- Human resources • Indicators of economic health or downturn
- Demographic composition
- Educational resources
- • Physical infrastructure
- Research and development infrastructure
- Virtual infrastructure
- Business climate
- Cultural nuances
Step 4: Form a Regional Identity and Vision
The fourth step in the WIRED blueprint involves creating a regional identity and vision to guide the economic development process. This vision shapes long-term goals, so it drives decisions about how resources should be allocated. It should also be used as a touchstone during times of challenge or conflict. Since it forms the backbone for economic development strategies, the vision should include diverse views from all partners. All relevant geographic and industrial interests should be represented, for example. The vision can be continuously refined and tweaked.
Step 5: Devise Strategies
The leadership group’s planning should:
- Be derived from the SWOT analysis.
- Support the regional identity and vision.
- Be SMART — Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and include a Time Line.
Strategies and action steps should be clearly communicated so that partner groups understand their roles and responsibilities. Finally, funds should be allocated realistically so that the strategy can be executed as planned.
Step 6: Leverage Resources and Implement
The final step is to leverage resources from participating organizations — private, nonprofit and government — and to implement the economic development strategy. During this phase, prior initiatives and activities should be reviewed, and where possible, they should be folded into the current plans so efforts do not contradict or duplicate each other. There should be short-, medium- and long-term activities that are tied to the broader regional identity and vision.
During the implementation phase, there must be a way to measure progress and success. At a minimum, the leadership group should collect data to communicate the progress that has been made. Optimally, though, these data should be used to evaluate what strategies are working, how they are working and how they might be improved.
Conclusion
In his 2005 book, “The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century,” Thomas Friedman writes that “Globalization 3.0 is shrinking the world from a size small to a size tiny and flattening the playing field at the same time.”
If this is true, then Economic Development 3.0 must adopt models and strategies that recognize, embrace and even exploit the changes brought about by globalization. The WIRED approach is one such model, as it emphasizes the gains that can come from leveraging shared resources, developing talent, and creating conditions to foster innovation and vitality.
 ‘Too Good to be True’
Teresa Kittridge couldn’t believe her good fortune in finding a job with a group that is helping to build the economy of rural Minnesota.
By Monte Hanson
Public service is practically ingrained in Teresa Kittridge’s DNA.
Kittridge, who was recently named executive director of the Minnesota Renewable Energy Marketplace, comes from a long line of judges, police officers and politically active family members.
“We were raised with the idea that you were active in your community and involved in public service,” said Kittridge, who grew up in Mankato. “That was a part of our dinner talk.”
Her grandfather, Leonard Keyes, was a district judge in Anoka County for 35 years, while grandmother Cecilia Keyes was a DFL party official and close friend of Hubert H. Humphrey. Her father, Gerald Kittridge, was a trooper with the Minnesota State Patrol for 35 years, retiring as a lieutenant colonel and later lobbying at the state Capitol as the executive director of the Minnesota Peace and Police Officers Association. Her mother, Martha Keyes Kittridge, was a nurse who spent the last 20 years of her career conducting pre-sentence investigations for people with gambling and addiction problems.
She has a sister who is a county commissioner in Blue Earth County, a brother who is a public defender and another brother who headed the Minnesota State Patrol.
Kittridge, who is married with a 16-year-old daughter, has an extensive resume in public service herself, including 20 years with the Chief Clerk’s Office in the Minnesota House of Representatives, three years with the Washington, D.C., based Rural Policy Research Institute, and the past four years on the Waconia School Board. “It’s the craziest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” she said of the school board position.
Given her background, it made perfect sense for her to apply earlier this year to lead the Marshall-based Minnesota Renewable Energy Marketplace, previously known as the Ag Innovation Triangle.
The mission of the group, funded through a $5 million grant from the Workforce Innovation in Regional Economic Development program (WIRED), is to help prepare workers for careers in the renewable energy sector and to support businesses and industries that are emerging from a 36-county region in southwestern, south-central and west-central Minnesota that has been historically dominated by agriculture.
Kittridge was attracted to the job because it was a little bit rural, a little bit private sector and a little public sector – a perfect fit for her experience and interests.
“I went to interview for the job on a Friday afternoon, and I thought, ‘This job is too good to be true,’” she said. “We just sort of found each other, and it was amazing.”
The Minnesota Renewable Energy Marketplace hopes to capitalize on the ag-based resources that already exist in rural Minnesota, creating related industries and jobs that will enable the region to compete globally.
Over the next two years, program funding will be spent on promoting entrepreneurship in the area, primarily through grants to help launch startup businesses and training programs to make sure people with the right skills are available for jobs in emerging industries.
Renewable energy, especially wind power and ethanol production, is the main focus of the effort. The sector is already off to a promising start. For the past two years, India-based Suzlon Energy has been building blades for wind turbines at a factory in Pipestone, while Moventas, a Finnish builder of gear boxes for wind-power turbines, announced plans in September to build a production facility in Faribault. Those and related businesses are generating hundreds of new jobs in rural Minnesota.
Companies specializing in the agri-biosciences are another example of the types of businesses that the group hopes to attract or encourage to develop in the region.
The group is led by a 27-member board that includes such people as former U.S. Rep. Tim Penny, now the president of the Southern Minnesota Initiative Foundation, and Mark Willers, CEO of Minwind Energy in Luverne who is chairman of the group. Connie Ireland, a regional administrator with DEED, is also a board member.
Kittridge said the goal is to find what’s next for the agricultural economy in rural Minnesota.
“I was at a company in Marshall the other day. They are doing some amazing things with hog waste,” she said. “There are all these innovative things going on in these rural communities. It’s an amazing opportunity.”
|