Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, accepting the recommendations of her Council of Economic Advisors, adopted Partnering for Prosperity: An Economic Growth Action Agenda for Cook County, a report developed with assistance from RW Ventures and Metropolis Strategies.  The Action Agenda provides a blueprint for more strategic, targeted and deeper County engagement in regional economic development, recommending nine key strategies based on Cook’s role and capacities in the regional economy.  RW Ventures and Metropolis Strategies will continue to work with Cook County, as it now adapts its programs and engages partners to create transformative initiatives to implement the strategies.

As part of a Chicago Tribune series on the region’s biggest challenges in 2014, Bob Weissbourd argued for the importance of achieving inclusive economic growth, and identified strategies for better deploying the people and places often left out of the economy. For more on inclusive growth, see the New Growth Innovation Network (NGIN) website at www.newgrowth.org.

Prepared for Cook County by its Council of Economic Advisors, Metropolis Strategies and RW Ventures, this Action Agenda begins by addressing Cook County’s role in the regional economy, in light of dramatic changes taking place in the global economy. It then outlines a framework for understanding the County’s opportunities to influence economic growth, identifying the intersection of regional economic growth opportunities, the County’s unique assets and challenges, and Cook County government’s capacities. Applying this framework, the Action Agenda analyzes Cook County’s economic assets, challenges and opportunities in the context of the region. Based on this analysis, the Action Agenda recommends nine economic growth strategies for Cook County to adopt in order to promote regional economic growth, and outlines next steps for implementing the strategies.

These three presentations outline the key drivers of economic growth in the next economy, articulate the concept of “metro-economics” and describe the approach of Metropolitan Business Planning. The first two presentations apply these frameworks in the context of the South Bend and metropolitan Milwaukee areas, while the third presentation, delivered at the Winter meeting of the Mayor’s Innovation Project, considers the questions that regions should answer in order to understand their unique opportunities for economic growth. The South Bend presentation was delivered at the first ever South Bend Economic Summit, co-hosted by the Mayor of South Bend, and the heads of the Chamber of Commerce of St. Joseph County and the Corporate Partnership for Economic Growth. The Milwaukee presentation was delivered at a meeting of the Milwaukee 7 Regional Economic Development Advisory Council.

The plan was developed at the request of Mayor Rahm Emanuel by World Business Chicago and a team of consultants, including RW Ventures. It begins with an overview of the necessary foundations for growth in the “next economy,” followed by an assessment of the region’s economy along five market levers that drive regional growth and a set of ten transformative growth strategies informed by this rigorous analysis. The report ends by considering potential impacts of and risks to implementation and outlining the next steps in implementation.

This report, prepared for the Mayor’s Advisory Council on Bridging the Digital Divide, outlines a comprehensive plan for achieving universal digital excellence, as vital to the future of a global city.

This paper and related presentation, prepared for Opportunity Finance Network and CFED, introduce a new framework for bipartisan economic development policies, centered on the idea of “inclusionary growth”.

The increasing attention paid to the region as a key unit of economic activity has given rise to powerful new economic development strategies. By focusing on economic rather than political boundaries, regional approaches can more effectively tackle development issues and devise more comprehensive strategies for economic growth. This conclusion is well articulated in the recent Report of the Strengthening America’s Communities Advisory Committee. However, the regional scope of the strategy does not mean that its focus and interventions can be limited to a regional level. To succeed in the long run, regional strategies must reflect the connections between the region and its cities and neighborhoods – all of the communities which constitute the region. The economic prosperity of the region and of its communities is inextricably intertwined.

To read more, download the Strengthening Communities PDF.

This presentation, prepared for CEOs for Cities’ annual meeting, explores some of the key findings that have emerged from the literature on the role of cities in the national economy and on the drivers of urban economic growth. Based on these findings, we extrapolate seven broad principles for urban policy and suggest several related strategies for city and regional economic development.

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