New narratives in the Great Lakes Nation | Say goodbye to the Rust Belt
Narratives are important for guiding open networks. They provide the emotional connections and coherence that enable members of the network to align, link and leverage their resources. Within the business world, as hierarchical, command-and-control bonds within corporations weaken, manager are learning the value of story-telling. (For those of you interested, Steven Denning's work is most valuable.)
Within regional economies, we have little choice but to get really good at creating and managing narratives. It's the only way to gain alignment across large, loosely joined networks that characterize a regional economy. When we gain this alignment -- and put in place agile strategies to maintain the alignment -- the power of the network (the so-called Metcalfe effect) begins to emerge.
We are seeing this movement toward creating and managing new narratives most clearly in the Great Lakes.
Globalization hit the metropolitan regions of the Great Lakes hardest for a simple reason. The states of the Great Lakes provided the core industrial wealth of the country. Beginning in the 1960s, improvements in logistics enabled global markets to integrate. The move in that direction accelerated with the Tokyo Round of Trade Negotiations in the 1970s dramatically reduced trade barriers.
As competition intensified, industrial companies, organized to manage stable mass production, struggled to adjust. The 1970s saw a major collapse in the U.S. steel industry. Through the 1980s and 1990s the U.S. auto industry continued to struggle. All this left behind a legacy which outside commentators labeled the “Rust Belt”.
By the early 1980's, U.S. multinationals were busy constructing global manufacturing networks. (For about three years in the early 1980s, I worked for a corporate strategy consulting firm. We spent most of our time with General Electric, as GE managers try to figure out how to build global manufacturing networks in businesses such as appliances and electric motors.)
Over the past 25 years a new narrative has been struggling to emerge in the Great Lakes Nation. It started in my hometown of Cleveland.
By the late 1980s, the national press started to label Cleveland as the “comeback city”. When Cleveland landed the Rock and Role All of Fame in 1986, the new narrative seemed to be building some momentum. In the 1990's Drew Carey, a Cleveland native, used his television show to proclaim every week “Cleveland Rocks!”
<div style="background:#000000;width:440px;height:272px"></div><div style="font-size:12px;">Drew Carey Show - Long Version Theme #1 - Awesome video clips here</div></div>
(Oddly, civic leaders in Cleveland never quite understood the power of this new narrative, so they have hung their hats on a corporate and bland Cleveland Plus campaign. Much of the "Cleveland Rocks" momentum has been lost.)
By the early years of the new century, additional narratives begin the pop-up around the Great Lakes Nation. Youngstown provided one of the most interesting examples. A small group of young professionals, tired of the Rust Belt mentality, declared their commitment to “Defend Youngstown.” They announced to the elders running the city, "Stop talking about the steel mills closing down. We were not even born."
Now we have more innovative and exciting narratives of the Great Lakes Nation. Michigan is the center of this work.
Some time ago, Michigan's tourism development officials launched a highly successful “Pure Michigan” campaign that highlights the sustainability, water and beauty that form the core of the environment in the Great Lakes Nation.
Milwaukee has leveraged the water of the Great Lakes Nation most aggressively as a dynamic new economic base in a world in which water shortages will only grow. You can see this approach in the Milwaukee Water Council web site. Milwaukee is busy building out a water cluster in the Great Lakes by combining with other metros, like Dayton, that see potential in the emerging markets for fresh water technology.
Detroit has given voice another core set of activities and attitudes that define the Great Lakes Nation: We make stuff.
This gritty pragmatism comes through in this commercial, which echoes the attitude of Defend Youngstown:
Subaru in Indiana is combining the manufacturing heritage of the Great Lakes Nation with a commitment to environmental stewardship. Marrying these two themes starts to define how manufacturing will emerge as more "zero land fill" emerge in the region. At Purdue, it inspired a group of us to work on the first national certification for green manufacturing.
In the past month, the city Grand Rapids has taken another step forward with a dynamic video that highlights the creativity and energy in their city.
Another important thread is emerging. The Great Lakes Nation holds the highest concentration of top ranked research universities on the planet. Increasingly, we are seeing growing collaboration among these universities. Again, Michigan is leading the trend with the University Research Corridor.
These threads will eventually weave together to create a new narrative for the Great Lakes Nation, a region of proud history, whose charter was originally defined in the words of Thomas Jefferson and the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, also known as the Freedom Ordinance.
