Quickly strengthening regional collaborations in West Michigan
Civic leaders in a corner of West Michigan are moving ahead with new collaborations after we conducted a strategy workshop in Holland, MI a couple of weeks ago.
The leadership has been strengthening the collaborations in Holland-Zeeland over the last few years, and the results are beginning to show.
Through this work, they produced what they call the "white paper in a brown wrapper" that outlines three areas of strategic focus for the Lakeshore in west Michigan (a 2 county region within a broader region of 13 or 14 counties) These focus areas include education, economic development and government collaboration. They call this work in Holland Zeeland the Model Communities initiative.
Our workshop focused on the challenges in economic development, and we found a number of collaborative initiatives on which to focus. They include high speed broadband infrastructure, tighter networks among entrepreneurial support organizations, and a marketing message for the Lakeshore that is more tightly aligned and focused.
The Lakeshore in West Michigan will be a region to watch in the coming months. In the West Michigan region, innovating networks -- the deeper capability of developing and executing on complex projects in open networks -- is beginning to take hold.
Recently, the Korea's largest chemical company, LG Chem, announced that it was building a battery plant in Holland to supply battery cells for the Chevy Volt. To capitalize on the growing interest in advanced energy storage, Lakeshore Advantage, the economic development organization, is moving ahead with a cluster of advanced energy storage.
During our three hour session in Holland, participants learned how to put collaborations together quickly with the disciplines of Strategic Doing. Here are the slides I used to introduce the workshop.
Later, we moved on to Grand Rapids to speak with economic developers from throughout West Michigan. During our discussions, we focused on agribusiness and food technology as a target cluster to begin building more collaborations quickly. This work will begin in September.
