Collaborative Leadership and Governance

To accomplish scale in the responses to the challenges facing the Future Forward area, public and private leaders must come together to demonstrate regional coordination in ways that lead to regional solutions.

Developing the Area’s Scale and Improving Connectivity

The challenges facing the area are significant and long-term. Responses to these challenges must be big and bold. Likewise development efforts in the future must be big and bold. The leaders of the area must work together to channel individual efforts in a common direction – creating “scale” – and identify regionally significant actions that could affect many or all of the counties – creating “connectivity.”

Innovation and Entrepreneurship

The region has a tradition of entrepreneurial behavior, but that tradition has declined significantly in recent generations as demonstrated by the lack of economic diversity in the area and the use of traditional manufacturing methods in many industries. To recapture the spirit of entrepreneurship and innovation, local firms, workers, and potential business owners must change their behaviors and attitudes about what they make and for whom they make it. In addition to encouraging new business formation, the strategies are also designed to assist existing firms to become more innovative and adopt more up-to-date management principles and new technologies as a way to respond to the global marketplace.

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