Bob's Update - November 14, 2005
Innovation is at the heart of what I wanted to talk to you about this week – how innovation and a new spirit of entrepreneurship are setting the most hopeful scene for pulling our economy forward – locally as well as regionally. I wanted to make sure you knew that recent developments, to my mind, mean that our County is truly poised to become a regional and national leader in innovation-based economic development.
And then I read of the death, at age 95, of Peter Drucker – one of the world’s most innovative thinkers on the modern organization and its importance to the social fabric. Peter Drucker took a great interest in the non-profit sector, especially in his later years, and was one of the first to preach the importance of sound business practices, with employees as key resources, in the public sector.
I think Drucker would have hailed the public-private collaborative efforts now underway here in Washtenaw County. The Washtenaw Development Council and SPARK are making the momentous effort to merge in the next year, and they’ve just hired a leader to help both the merger and the important mission of these organizations. You may remember my Update on SPARK from late last spring.
I believe that the mission of these organizations deals with no less than the economic future of Washtenaw County –and the state of Michigan. That’s why the news of the addition of Michael Finney as the new President and CEO of both the WDC and SPARK is such important news.
After an intensive, six-month search to fill this very important position the WDC and SPARK have hired Michael Finney. Finney will be coming home to Michigan from Rochester, New York, where he has been president and chief executive officer of Greater Rochester Enterprise, the public/private economic development arm of greater Rochester. Prior to accepting the Rochester position in October, 2002, Finney managed the Michigan Economic Development Corporation’s (MEDC’s) $1 billion Michigan Life Sciences Corridor initiative that provided seed and grant money to bolster the state’s life science research and commercialization efforts area. It's the perfect fit. (See the Press Release).
With Finney in place, and the merger of SPARK and WDC underway, I think the five so-called pillars forming the mission will happen:
- Improve the region’s entrepreneurial climate
- Attract and develop top managerial professional and technical talent
- Increase the availability of investment capital for area technology businesses
- Build Washtenaw County’s image, both regionally and nationally as a leader in innovation and a technology center
- Enhance the region’s cultural and economic vitality
You should know about this effort. You should also know that, as Michigan’s Executive and Legislative branches continue to struggle with even short-term answers to reviving a moribund economy, something important is happening locally.
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An engaged private sector, a committed public sector with local unit representation, both of our major state universities, and organizations willing to come together to make change happen – it’s as if the stars are aligning. I think that SPARK and the WDC, under the leadership of Mike Finney are this State’s – perhaps this region’s - best opportunity for our future economic health.
“Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship... the act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth.”
Those are Peter Drucker’s words, and today in Washtenaw County, they could easily be our marching orders.
I hope it’s a great week.
