IEDC 2011 Spring Conference
Friday, June 10, 2011
At the beginning of this week the Economic Growth Council team headed to Indianapolis to attend the International Economic Development Council's 2011 Spring Conference. This year's theme was Understanding Tomorrow's Industries of Today: The Landscape of the Future. Some of the topics covered included entrepreneurship, digital economy, clean tech, life sciences, and the future of manufacturing.
Session Notes:
Logistics, Altered Commercial Real Estate, Food Processing -
- The current logistics goal is 55 in 5 meaning, your trucks moving at 55 mph within 5 minutes leaving a truck dock
- There will be shift in ship traffic once the "new Panama Canal" is in service
- The railroads are taking up the new paradigm of increased investment in intermodal. I.e. NS Heartland Corridor opening late 2010 and CSX New Baltimore Ohio facility open in 2010. Both of these investments impacted Grant County
- New commercial offices are decreasing to 50 sqf per person from today's typical of 150 sqf/person
- The new marketplace is placing a higher premium on proximity to organic or near organic crops
- The quality and quantity of available water is among the top 5 location factors
Entrepreneurship:
In the entrepreneurship session, a large portion of the time was focused on defining clusters (aka, what is your niche?). They defined economic development as ESOs (Entrepreneurship Support Organizations) and gave the attending economic developers some tools to begin defining their community's niches.
Economic Developers need to:
- Become awesome storytellers
- Pick 4-5 stories and tell them to everyone
- Make media's jobs easier
- Rebalance economic development strategy to focus on growth enterprises*
- Target Industries
- Create Incubator's with sector focus
- Connect entrepreneurs into the ecosystem
- Create results
- Plan innovative ways to celebrate success
- i.e. Indiana's Companies to Watch (CTW)
Entrepreneurship creates jobs, attracts money/talent/companies, and it drives the culture of a community. Helping define those clusters will begin driving the entrepreneurship bandwagon forward.
- Growth Enterprises are second stage entrepreneurs (focus on growth issues vs. survival)
How to define a cluster? (See charts below)
Growing Talent:
One of the things they shared during this segment was that trying to teach students regarding new technology is difficult at the pace innovation is currently moving.
"Prediction is really tough, especially when its about the future"
If so, how can we prepare today's youth to be ready for tomorrow's innovation? The driver's of future change will always remain the same. Teaching kids to think:
- Conceptually
- Creatively
- Collaboratively
- Diversely
- Dynamically
- Distributively
is important. Core skills can also continue to be taught: lifelong learning, information search, problem solving, curiosity, critical thinking, scientific method, asking questions, tolerate ambiguity, build relationships, establish trust, leading, and influencing without authority.
As Mark Twain once said, "The future may not repeat itself, but it sure rhymes a lot."
Bloom's Taxonomy of Learning (going back to the basics) - remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, are elements that should be put into play.
Children should be taught to create stories. Go where no one has gone. Build simulators.
In the spirit of creation and innovation, here is a conference doodle for everyone to enjoy:
