Moving now

You can now find me at this address:

http://www.ee.unirel.vt.edu/index.php/econdevelopment/

Still waiting...

The university is still engineering me some awesome blog...which we don't have access to as of yet.

In the meantime read this awesome analysis about the manufacturing sector from the big brains at 538.

Moving soon...

Watch this space for details of our move to a new Virginia Tech hosted blog site. I'm told that should be coming any day now.

In the meantime read here about the purchase of the massive shuttered Ford plant in Norfolk by a manufacturer of solar panels.

Bookshelf 1-23

Sorry for the lack of posts this week. I was jammed up finishing up one project and starting up another. Both of these will be the subject of posts in the near future.

I looked in my "to read" stack and found a few things worth sharing.

I just picked up Dan Pink's new book Drive. I'm always a bit leery of author-gurus but after his relentless promotion across several NPR programs I picked up Pink's latest. He is focused on evidence about the role internal motivation plays in the modern workforce. My interest in this topic stems from my participation in a project looking at faculty involvement in community engagement activities. Traditional professional incentives not withstanding (i.e. publish or perish) many faculty do take up engagement activities. What's driving them? Maybe Pink will help us figure it out.

I also just picked up the an article on career ladders in the recent edition of Economic Development Quarterly (subscription required for full text). The authors Marla Wilson and Laura Wolf-Powers measure economic development impacts of employment growth in hospital sector through method of "job chain" analysis. Increasing I see projects coming across my desk where the university can link up with community colleges to build stronger partnerships with industry in support of educational pathways and/or career ladders. (The big new project I alluded to at the top of this post involves something like that with the construction industry.) I hope Wilson and Wolf-Powers offer some tools that can help me quantify the potential benefits of these opportunities.

Happy Birthday Ben Franklin

The founding father whose story every economic developer should know was born 303 years ago today on January 17, 1706. He had already made his money as an entrepreneurial printer with an eye for market opportunities and an ability to deliver solutions. A brilliant inventor, he was the first open source advocate, never patenting some of his most useful innovations like lightning rods, bifocals, or vastly improved wood stoves. At the same time he was a forward thinking civic entrepreneur whose innovations like lending libraries and fire departments vastly improved the quality of life in his community that made it a great place to live and work.

Why is firm formation constant?

Interesting new Kauffman study.

Key findings:

“According to a new study released today by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, however, new-business creation in the United States is remarkably constant over time. Exploring Firm Formation: Why Is the Number of New Firms Constant? reveals that none of the factors that might bear on prospective entrepreneurs' decisions to form new companies—recessions, expansions, tax changes, population growth, scarce or abundant capital, technological advances or others—has much impact on the pace of U.S. startups.”

So can we all go home now?

“… the study showed that entrepreneurship education and venture capital, two indicators that have received heightened attention in recent years, had no appreciable impact on entrepreneurial activity in the United States."

Not quite...

"However, the authors point out, it could very well be that entrepreneurship education, venture capital and similar entrepreneur-friendly measures have helped maintain a constant level of firm formation.”

*Sigh* What was it Truman said about looking for a one-handed economists?

Clean Tech Manufacturing Grants

A nice success for the Shenandoah Valley!

AAF-McQuay, Inc. located in Verona was the only Virginia firms to secure a federal tax credit to support clean tech manufacturing projects. AAF received a $774,937 credit. The company plans to re-equip a manufacturing facility to produce Next-Generation Centrifugal Chiller Rooftop Air Conditioning systems. The chillers are significantly more energy-efficient than those currently on the market.

A long road back?

Some of you may be familiar with the City of Franklin, which is a community of 8,000 over in peanut country in the eastern part of the state. International Paper, the major employer in the City, announced last October the plant will close ending more than 1,000 jobs.

The Virginia Pilot carried a couple of pieces recently that were focused on lessons to learn from the experiences of Martinsville after the closure of textile factories there in the 90's. The unemployment rate there still typically leads the state. The community has some successes to celebrate in terms of new firms, but these are typically much smaller than plants that were lost. There are also some hopeful stories related in the article about individual entrepreneurship. Bottom line however, is that it's a long road back form a loss like that experienced in Martinsville and Franklin.

If you think about the long term there are important things going on in Martinsville that didn't get covered in the story. Community foundations, higher education, and business-focused non-profits are doing important work for building the community's economic future.

I know Franklin was working on support for entrepreneurs before the closure. In the crush I know they're under to deal with the immediate crisis I'm hopeful they'll be able to keep these longer term projects on the agenda.

Has Richard Florida jumped the shark?

Reactions to this article in the American Prospect generated a lot of interesting reading for me over the holiday. I participate in a planning academic listserve that has been non-stop on this for weeks. Florida has been taking hits for the academy since day one, but perception of his work in the popular press remained pretty laudatory until quite recently.

I fall in what the Prospect identifies as a common critique...

"In a standard version of this critique, Amy Liu of the Brookings Institution -- with which Florida was once affiliated -- praises him for debunking 'smoke-stack chasing' as economic development but says he has replaced that with another flawed 'attraction' strategy."

Do jobs follow people or the reverse as traditional perceptions would hold? Of course the answer isn't so simple but nuance doesn't sell books.

The Prospect story also draws a parallel I've long been thinking about exploring further....

"There is a long tradition of charismatic economic--development troubadours. In the 1990s, it was Michael Porter, a Harvard Business School professor who swept into inner cities with his theories of industry clusters."

Porter was coming on strong as I entered this field and arc by which these theories disseminate into practice says something about economic development. When I figure out what I'll let you know.

Pellets!

Wood pellets, as discussed in the NY Times here, were one of the sectors my studio class looked at for SustainFloyd this term. I was a bit surprised by the distinct business models among firms working for export (see the examples in the NY Times link above) and firms working on production for local markets like this. The installation of specialized stoves by consumers and the need to build retail networks is a challenge for the domestic market. A federal tax credit (through 2010) promote some movement in this area.

Animated map of US unemployment

Eye popping graphic from Purdue's center for rural development here.

We are now open for "business"

Just so you know we are now moving into out "soft-rollout" phase. I have opened access to the blog and would invite you to share the our address with others. Plans are underway to migrate to a university platform, but I'd really enjoy getting some additional feedback going before we make that move.

Thanks!
John

Arguements against wind losing steam?

The impact on property values has long been a concern with respect to wind projects. This hefty US DOE financed study looking at 7,500 properties around the nation makes a pretty definitive case it is a non-issue.

I have heard less about the question of health impacts. A recent industry-funded review finds no medical basis for concern. That's probably not the last word of the subject.

A collective failure of imagination

Slate's Daniel Gross always gets my attention. He argues here that the left and right are wrong about the stimulus and are locked into "a collective failure of imagination" about the direction of the economy. The ability of banks to raise cash in the market to pay back the TARP funds, rising exports, job slowing job losses (and maybe even slight job growth by the time revised November figures are in) are all among the evidence he highlights.

Gross also notes the changing character of stimulus projects coming on line in the new year, for example construction a new tunnel between NYC and NJ employing 1,000 people. The impact of those jobs may be different than the loss prevention in education and government that predominated last year.

However, down here in the trenches things still look pretty grim. There are real consequences for real people as we're reminded in the NY Times today.

I have some concern that the type of rural distressed communities where we spend most of our time might be the last place to feel whatever change is working its way through the system. What do you think?

Millennials...

Over the holidays, my aunt and a friend both recommended that I take a glance at this book:
"Keeping the Millennials: Why Companies Are Losing Billions in Turnover to this Generation and What to do About It"

Just curious if anyone has read this yet... I must admit that I have not, but I am considering adding it to my reading list for break...

When did Michael Porter jump the shark?

Do you remember the roaring 90's and the place Michael Porter used to have on the bookshelves of every economic developer? Porter's neat repackaging of old ideas about agglomeration and industrial districts set off a complex conceptual arms race between academics, practitioners, and consultants all looking to subdivide this intellectual real estate. Communities were offered a heady menu from which to repackage their community's assets as a response to global economic restructuring.

A lot of the data work with industry cluster analysis that used to be time consuming can be covered by increasingly accessible free on-line tools . So what's left to do?

Portland-based consultant Joe Cortright, writing for Brookings, described the thinking behind clusters as "cursed with being vague, comprehensible, and basically true." For example, the significance of regional scale and the concentration of existing industry for economic competitiveness readily penetrated discussions among practitioners. But too often regionalism is limited to a discussion about marketing, and the conversation around industry concentration mistakes mass for function in the global economy.

There are useful efforts to develop meaningful analytical tools for occupational and technology/knowledge clusters. I'll have more on those in future posts. What I want to think more about now however are strategy development and implementation. The communities who once may have needed us to churn out location quotients can take that step themselves with some ease. That should leave us free to facilitate that will add infinitely more value. These should include more meaningful conversations with local industries and other stakeholders, and importantly follow projects well beyond analysis and into implementation.

Exhaustion=recovery

Have employers pushed worker productivity to the max in the recession? Daniel Gross thinks "like hamsters on a treadmill" at 9.5% productivity growth for 3Q we're about to drop. He runs the numbers for you here. What do you think? And are there urban and rural differentials in productivity growth that will have implications for our work?

Links that caught my eye 11-10

The recession is hitting home in very different ways.
The Jobless Rate for People Like You



One of the best economic development stories ongoing at Virginia Tech. Integrating higher ed and economic development Special bonus a Ted Settle Podcast!



I hadn't thought about the potential role of composite materials, a strength in SWVA, in turbine construction.
Offshore wind pilot project in NC

Looking for green jobs for Floyd County

This fall graduate students from planning, public administration and forestry departments are participating in the Economic Development Studio @ Virginia Tech. The class is working with leaders of Sustain Floyd, a community based non-profit organization dedicated to the sustainable development of Floyd County, a rural county off the Blue Ridge Parkway in the New River Valley.

As many of you know I teach this hands on graduate course as a part of the Urban Affairs and Planning program. It is a final pre-professional experience for the students. This year students are working to identify opportunities for green or sustainable business in Floyd County. The class will begin their project with an analysis of Floyd County's assets and will subsequently assess the feasibility of specific business and industry opportunities.

I've seen their preliminary recommendations which include looking at micro-dairies, wood pellet manufacturing, green interior furnishings production, and a sustainable living education center. Any thoughts?

What are you reading?

Any models for us out there?

APA's Economic Development Division

Smart Communities

Chmura Economics

ED Pro