Report on the WIRED Initiative from Berkeley Policy Associates
The WIRED initiative (Workforce Innovation in Regional Economic Development) has been one of the most innovative federal initiatives in economic development in the past thirty years. The initiative enabled some of us to push the envelope in workforce and economic development strategy.
At Purdue, we pioneered the development and deployment of network based models in economic and workforce development, what we call Open Source Economic Development. We also refined new approaches to strategy in open networks, Strategic Doing. The report includes mention of the many ways we enabled networks to form in our region. It's a good overview of the WIRED initiative nationally. Although this report does not touch on baseline metrics, based on internal DOL data at the end of 2008, our region accounted for 40% of the total output of the 13 first generation WIRED regions. Our accomplishment demonstrates the power of network-based approaches to regional transformation. (download)
