Interview with Greg Northrup on WIRED West Michigan
Announcer: Welcome to Inside Michigan Education, a weekly show featuring interviews with community leaders, school administrators, school business officials, and individuals who are passionate about the future of Michigan Education. Now, here is your host for Inside Michigan Education, Rob Huisingh.
Rob Huisingh: Welcome to Inside Michigan Education, this week we are joined by Mr. Greg Northrup. Greg is the President of the West Michigan Strategic Alliance, and he is here today to talk about one of the organization's key initiatives, which is called WIRED West Michigan. This is the first in a series of shows that we're going to have dedicated to this topic. Welcome Greg, it's a pleasure to have you on our show.
Greg Northrup: Good, thank you Rob, it's a pleasure to be here, and a pleasure to talk about one of my favorite subjects.
Rob Huisingh: Greg, before we talk about WIRED though, I was wondering if you would begin by telling us a little bit about the West Michigan Strategic Alliance, and what is the organization, and what are your goals?
Greg Northrup: The Alliance was formed back in 2000, Rob. At the time there was a group of people concerned about how do we maintain quality life in our region, as we in West Michigan cherish that. As they started to look at global implications, competitive issues, economic transition that we were going through, they became concerned that we are going to be unable to sustain life style as we knew it at that point in time.
So, luckily for us about 250 people came together, and they identified some critical issues for us. We ended up focusing in what we call, Priorities for Regional Collaboration. There were six of those, Rob, things like regional mindsets, and what does regional mindset mean? How do we ensure a prosperous economy? What are we doing to make sure that the environment in fact is offering us the quality of life that we expect it to be? What are we doing about diversity in our urban cores and triplex growth strategies?
Each of those for us is a focus in terms of the priority process we are trying to do. I wake up every morning with this objective of, how do make this a best place to live, learn, work and play. That's really what the Alliance is all about; what are the public policy issues that we're trying to deal with that help us make that reality for us.
Rob Huisingh: Now, the WIRED Initiative, this was made possible by $15 million grant from the Department of Labor. What is unique about WIRED, and can you take us through what is WIRED all about?
Greg Northrup: Sure. Let's start with the acronym, WIRED stands for Workforce Innovation in Regional Economic Development. I think I can say with pretty good assurance that West Michigan was selected for this grant because we had demonstrated an ability to collaborate as a region.
One of the critical focuses for the Federal Government is to look at how we put money into regional economies that should cause regional change. So, luckily for us, a woman by the name of Emily DeRocco, who is the Assistant Secretary for Department of Labor, Employment & Training Administration, that's a long one, said to herself and her team, we can't continue to invest in workforce development programs in the same way based on the challenges that we're facing nationally, as well as what we have seen here in Michigan. Fortunately, in West side we haven't seen quite the impact that we have seen on the East side because of changes in the automotive sector. But, same old same holds is not going to get it, in terms of skill force development.
So, Emily to her credit said, basically, why don't we take some money and put it into an R&D sense, let regions decide what they should be doing to think about how to deal with workforce development issues. So, $15 million, seems like a lot of money. We're $45 plus billion economy, so 15 seems like a lot, it's not in the scheme of things, but I am sure happy to have it. It's helping us to think differently about how we look at workforce and economic development in our region.
Rob Huisingh: Now, the WIRED Initiative, its currently 12 projects, how did you arrive at those 12 projects?
Greg Northrup: Actually we call them innovations, Rob, they are 12 innovations. We are different than the other WIRED regions in the sense that, for the most part the other regions are investing in programs that currently exist, that they may have a way to tweak it or to expand it. We really said to ourselves, there are ideas that we have been working on for the last two or three years, can we use WIRED to help us in an innovative sense put together a new way to deal with some of the critical issues we are facing?
So, we call them innovations, because that's what they were. Some people say well, what have you guys been doing, why don't we see more action? To the extent that they are truly our innovations, these are ideas that had to be wedded. We put them through a pretty rigorous process to say, is it a good idea, does it really make sense, does the marketplace think that this will probably work? Are there actual clients for this? Is it sustainable, in the sense that, will the business sector support it?
So, each of the 12 innovations have gone through their own, what we call, stage gate process to be invested in. They have to pass a set of hurdles; concept development, business plan development, prototyping, and then launch. They only get funding after they have successfully met the test of each of those stages, Rob.
So, differently again than some of the other regions that have spent $15 million already, we have spent about, don't hold me to this, but somewhere in the range of 3-4 million of our $15 million. The bulk of the dollars will be spent in the next phase of the investment decisions that are being made for those innovation that are still going at this point in time.
Rob Huisingh: It's going to be interesting, because as you know, we're going to be doing a series of shows here, and we will have some of the other innovations here, and talking to them individually about what it is that they are doing.
I certainly appreciate your overview and sort of macro view of what's going on. The grant actually concludes in 2010, I am assuming that we're looking at this continuing past then?
Greg Northrup: Yeah, if we're really as good as we think we are Rob, we are saying to ourselves, can we set up a process by which we look at investments to be made in our region? For the sake of argument, we have done a great job philanthropically, for example, investing in brick and mortar. Some of us are saying can we invest now in the capital of our intellectual processes to make us more effective as a region?
We all know that if we're going to be successful economically, we will be successful because of the intellectual capital that we have in our region, working in a global marketplace.
So, what we're doing at this point is we're saying is there a process we can use, the information stage gate process, management stage gate process, that we're using to vet other ideas and concepts? Can we find funders, knowing that we're making good use in using good discipline as we evaluate ideas to say, maybe this is a mechanism we should be using for our region to take forward other new ideas? So, can we sustain it in the sense that the kinds of thing we're doing would generate support for how do we deal with this in the future?
I think Rob, if we look at our world and how fast things change, that if you think that the ideas that you're employing today are the ones that are going to make us successful tomorrow, it's not going to work. We better be on a pretty fast track, and we know how quickly things change in the world, to be looking at new ways to deal with workforce development and economic development issues. So, I think sustainable future is going to be critical to us, and maybe this is one of the things that we can use to help us get there.
Rob Huisingh: Fascinating. Greg, it has been a pleasure to have you on our show. I know that there is an awful lot more of information that people would like to have, we will be running a series of shows here with people that are involved with the innovations. I just want to thank you for taking the time to be with us and for being on our show.
Greg Northrup: Good, I am happy to be with you, Rob.
Rob Huisingh: If you would like to contact Greg, he can be reached by telephone at (616) 356-6060, again, that's (616) 356-6060. To read more about the West Michigan Strategic Alliance online, please visit www.wm-alliance.org, again, that URL is www.wm-alliance.org.
In addition, more information about WIRED West Michigan is available at www.wiredwestmi.org, again, that URL is www.wiredwestmi.org. Until next week, this is Rob Huisingh with Inside Michigan Education.
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