For past few weeks, John Lawrence, manager of economic development planning for EDGE, has been writing a series about the Memphis and Shelby County Regional Economic Development Plan. We are deeply grateful to him for taking the time to author nine posts that illuminate the ambitions and attitudes of the planning process. Here’s his final post, but links to all the previous ones can be found at the bottom of this column.
By John Lawrence
The last few months have been spent analyzing market conditions, exploring guiding strategies and building broad teams to inform the process. It is now time to start developing and prioritizing specific initiatives that will become our first-phase implementation plans.
A Long Way to Go
Despite historic business success and recent economic developments, the trajectory of the Memphis metro area is far from safe. Top-line performance measures indicate that it will take a much more calculated and focused effort to ensure prosperity for area citizens, confidence for area businesses and sustainability for area governments.
Road Map to Get There
We want to be the preeminent region for movement of goods. We want to be the hub for innovation and production of globally valuable exports. We want to be the home for broad based opportunity, improved skills and access to jobs. And we want to model of region-wide collaboration, market analysis, planning and implementation.
The six economic-market-lever workgroups and the Steering Committee have defined guiding strategies to provide direction.
* Secure the Global Logistics Brand
* Diversify the Economy Beyond Logistics
* Leverage Assets for International Trade
* Build a New Manufacturing Economy Workforce
* Organize for Innovative Entrepreneurial Growth
* Connect Jobs, Workers, Institutions and Activity Centers
* Track the Market to Understand Emerging Opportunities
Possible Starting Points
Over the next few months, concepts will be developed and business plans will be created for a limited number of targeted lead initiatives. The Steering Committee has been weighing possibilities based on need and opportunity, existing and possible partnerships, status of development and likelihood of success, alignment with strategy and workgroup recommendations, and mountains of market research.
Possible first step initiatives being discussed include:
Industry Driven Workforce Development to link target industries to trainers, increase career readiness and basic skills for candidates, improve technical skills, and reduce frustration for both employees and employers.
Biologistics to create a well-recognized, time-sensitive hub for medical products and diagnostic services.
Export Plan to develop a team comparable to peer regions and targeted, integrated services that help regional businesses connect to global customers.
Innovation Districts to cluster research institutions, public resources and private companies in a connected, mixed-use setting instead of isolated business parks.
Regional Industry Consortiums to organize regional business leaders, subject matter experts, economic development entities and research institutions to identify opportunities and plan for improvements.
Venture Development Structure to start transforming the region into an innovation ecosystem by attracting world-class entrepreneurs and supporting the growth of innovation-based companies.
Ag-Biosciences Value-Chain to combine agriculture and manufacturing taking advantage of global demand growth for food, consumer goods and petroleum substitutes.
Economic Development Information Clearinghouse to continuously research, analyze and plan across all market drivers.
Coming Soon
Soon the Memphis & Shelby County Regional Economic Development Plan team will narrow the list of starting initiatives and develop a true Metropolitan Business Plan for priority programs.
This will include actionable steps forward, specific services, products, policies and interventions. It will include target customers and beneficiaries. Peer models will be researched and costs estimated.
We will also identify leadership and key partners. We will establish initial milestones, long-range benefits and ongoing metrics. Funding sources will be developed, as will an accountability system.
These lead initiatives should provide movement toward building the greater Memphis region into a global leader in innovation, production and distribution of high-value goods and services, and a model of broad-based, inclusive growth.
The Series:
Part One: Creating a Process on Economic Development
Part Two: Securing the Global Logistics Brand
Part Three: Diversifying the Economy Beyond Logistics
Part Four: Leveraging Assets for International Trade
Part Five: Building A New Manufacturing Workforce
Part Six: Organizing for Innovative Entrepreneurial Growth
Part Seven: Connecting Jobs, Workers, Institutions & Activity Centers
Part Eight: Tracking the Market to Understand Emerging Opportunities
I wish I could be more upbeat about this project. After nine installments, I don’t know what we’ve been told that we didn’t know already. It just feels like contemplating our navel when action is needed. One thing for sure. It’s got enough buzzwords to make Brookings Institute happy.
I was in Louisville last week and I was told that the mayor there had ended this process there because it was too much process, it was delivering too much data and it was coming up with too few ideas that work.
Gwyn-
Very interesting feedback.
John:
Thank you for taking the time and caring enough to write these nine posts about the Memphis economy and the project that you are leading to improve it. As we wrote in your first post, you are a long-time friends of ours, and more to the point, you have been involved for many years in the trenches to improve this community.
We appreciate your interest in sharing these posts and in communicating with readers about the regional economic development plan. We know how much time it takes to write blog posts so in particular, we are grateful that you took so much time from your schedule to prepare these columns.
We look forward to updates in the future and we wish you the best as you proceed.
SCM
I have also heard that Louisville has dropped this project. Largely because of the lack of local participation in the project. I have no idea what is the reality.
Now the hard/fun part begins. Research for research sake is certainly not the point of this exercise. Creating implementation plans that have commitments and resources is the next step. However, we had to start from a place of true understanding. Much of this has simply been validation of what was already known or suspected. But there have been some interesting findings that bubbled up.
Reliance on logistics growth has been no secret. The magnitude of that dependence has surprised many people. And the changing nature of the industry has caused many to rethink our direction.
Medical devices are always front and center but the realization that we still employ almost 45,000 people in manufacturing of other products is intriguing.
We know skills and jobs don’t align. I don’t think we knew that community colleges may doing a better job of preparing people and developing models of industry partnerships. This offers an interesting place for progress from a point of strength if we can engage more firms and candidates in the process.
We have been frustrated that many of our institutions and big innovative companies aren’t spinning out talent and products and new start-ups. But we have found that some companies with operations here actually have models for patent/product divestiture that are working successfully in other markets to build new external companies.
Decentralization and connecting workers to jobs is not a new topic. But the answer may be even more difficult to find than ever thought.
We have a terrific upside in exporting, if we can provide a little assistance to existing manufacturers.
I do hope everyone will look for the next phase of this. I know many will be disappointed that it doesn’t do everything for everyone right away and it doesn’t aspire to push every envelop. But I do think the initiatives developed will be steps in the right direction. We have to solve skill problems if we are going to become an innovative economy and grow our production economy. I think we can strategically link industry to training and to candidates in new ways that helps this. We have to use our unique assets not just build them. Exporting and certain sector manufacturing development could help this.
We will work on solutions and report back soon. Thanks for the feedback. I look forward to the feedback on specific initiatives as we look for ways to expand traded-sectors, offer unique services, grow the regional economy and build on that to do more interesting, aspirational things in the future.
More of the same. It’s neverending. Memphis drowns while the PTBs write plans and analyze trends and use nifty buzzwords.
John,
Thanks for taking the time to post. Any information on how the “Memphis & Shelby County Regional Economic Development Plan team will narrow the list of starting initiatives” and what the timeline is for that action item?
To some degree, the debate on initiatives is already underway. As you might expect, everyone wants to do everything. So the Steering Committee and Workgroups have tried to frame their thoughts around the following general list in order to prioritize.
-The initiative is investment worthy, high impact and has a strong return on investment.
-The initiative offers quick wins AND long term opportunities.
-The initiative has a core city impact.
-The initiative is a big, bold, new or different idea.
-The initiative is well defined and ready to go to business planning.
-The initiative enhances the productivity of regional businesses.
-The initiative crosses different socioeconomic and skill segments.
There are other criteria emerging and the value placed on each criteria varies person to person but it is a starting place. And the base criteria of being valuable to traded sectors, to the region’s place in the new-economy, etc… is a first cut.
We hoped to have at least one initiative business plan done before the end of the year. That, however, is not likely. We are shooting for the first of the year for one, with perhaps another not far behind and a “quick-win” or two that may not require all out business plans along the way.