Innovation and Entrepreneurial Networks: REI.Tuesdays, a Platform for Civic Engagement

REI.Tuesdays

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2003 - 2005 REI.Tuesdays.-- weekly civic forums convened by the Center for Regional Economic Issues (REI) at the Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio engaged over 3,000 civic, business, government, and academic leaders from across 23 Northeast Ohio counties.

REI.Tuesdays civic forum conversations (Slide #2 above) address enterprise opportunity through the lens of the Innovation Framework - a heuristic model of investment in Open Source Economic Development (Slide #3).

The conversation matrix (Slide #4) provides an information infrastructure to underpin strategic scheduling and project presentation in the entrepreneurial community. Civic forums also introduce Strategic Doing - a simple, yet disciplined process to quickly move ideas to action (Slide #5) - and offer feedback loops for project work continuing outside of the regular forum schedule.

REI.Tuesdays is an example of how the civic forum process builds open economic networks for innovation to flourish and generates transformative enterprise for regional business development, human and organizational capacity building (Slide #6).

In terms of a model, REI.Tuesdays

  • Was funded by the telecommunications industry, SBC Global Ameritech
  • Supported by the Center for Regional Economic Issues, Case Western Reserve University, and 3000 Northeast Ohio business, government, academic, and civic entrepreneurs
  • Delivered social capital, web 2.0 platforms, local and global industry networks, generations of learning communties, and transformative industry clusters, and
  • Serves as a model for other forums, such as Fridays@The Corridor, Charleston Technology Corridor, Charleston, South Carolina and Thursdays at the House, Indiana Humanities Council, in Indianaoplois, Indiana.

The I-Open Civic Forum process is a successful approach to connect regional research and industry innovation for enterprise development in Open Source Economic Development.

Betsey Merkel, Co-Founder & Director of I-Open, is designer of the I-Open Civic Forum process.

References:

 

Dialogue & Inclusion: Midtown Wednesdays Conversation Matrix

Open_ceiling

Open Ceiling

Photo: Alice Merkel

The Midtown Wednesdays Conversation Matrix was built for Midtown Wednesdays, an I-Open Civic Forum convened by Chancellor University (formerly Myers University) in Cleveland, Ohio.

The matrix (screenshot below) is a tool to loosely organize conversations at a shared level of inquiry from several perspectives. 

Midtown Wednesday forums sought to examine three questions:

1.   What is our innovation opportunity? 

2.   What is our creative industry opportunity? and,  

3.   What is our global opportunity?  

Further framing of conversations via the categories of the Innovation Framework - a heuristic model for innovation investment in Open Source Economic Development - helps coordinators, communicators, and conveners guide community learning.

Matrices provide an under gird for conversations in their generation of social networks, collaborative economic development projects, and new business development.

You can learn more about Midtown Wednesdays, a public-private partnership to strengthen economic development in Cleveland, hosted by Chancellor University, the City of Cleveland's Department of Economic Development, National City Bank, and I-Open in 2006 at I-Open's Civic Projects.

Midtown Wednesdays Conversation Matrix

Copyright 2010 Betsey Merkel and I-Open. Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works. Institute for Open Economic Networks (I-Open) 4415 Euclid Ave 3rd Fl Cleveland, Ohio 44103 USA.

 

 

 

Introduction to Open Source Economic Development, Ed Morrison, Co-Founder I-Open and Policy Analyst, Purdue University

Ed Morrison prepared this presentation for the April 2008 I-Open Leadership Retreat hosted at the beautiful Punderson State Park in Newberry, Ohio.

The presentation offers a succinct outline of the concepts and knowledge areas important to civic leaders building networks and collaborations in communities and regions.

The material draws deeply from Ed's life work as a brilliant economic development strategist. 

From our time working together at Case Western Reserve University's Center for Regional Economic Development (REI) from 2003 to 2005, we added process extensions and additional refinements.

These contiguous developments included the Tuesdays@REI Civic Forum process for civic entrepreneurs (designed by Betsey Merkel) and the Strategic Doing process (Ed Morrison). Both were refined out of the REI work building civic networks and strengthening entrepreneurial initiatives in Northeast Ohio.

Regional practitioner thought leaders - and there were many - offered strong influences in the areas of network mapping, Open Space Technologies, Appreciative Inquiry, social technologies, design, knowledge management, and visualization during our tenure.

These are typical of the practices and tools entrepreneurs and leaders of organizations, business, academia, and government need to be proficient in today to build competitive networks and collaborations for global economies.

It is this re-tooling of capacities that will strengthen entrepreneurial innovation in such important industries as alternate energies, manufacturing, health care, land use, creative digital media, technology, and water efficiency in Open Source Economic Development.

I-Open on Strategy-Nets: industry collaboration with an enterprise footprint

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 I-Open first announced its partnership with Near-Time.com May 14, 2007. Over the following three years, I-Open focused on applying the Near-Time tool set to early applications of face-to-face and online network and community development in Open Source Economic Development initiatives in many states.

Ed Morrison, Co-Founder and past Director of I-Open, led initiatives across the country while Northeast Ohio Co- Founders and Directors Betsey Merkel, Dennis Coughlin, and Susan Altshuler - along with the expertise of regional leaders - co-led initiatives in Northeast Ohio.

Article: "I-Open Selects Near-Time to Help Drive Community through Web Integration" 

I-Open's value as an industry partner with technology companies works in a couple of ways:

First, I-Open collaborates with technology and creative companies to build the place based open, neutral spaces for new conversations to take place, engaging business leaders focused on shared interests. Over time, conversations increase opportunities for innovative, collaborative local partnerships.

That's where a second stage of partnership comes in: in this case, the application of a Web 2.0 platform to sustain conversations and amplify community building, complete with a tool set to advance project work.

Online destinations offer a landing place for people to continue their conversations once they've gone back to the office. If a project is started, Web 2.0 tools enable work to continue from any place, independent of traditional meetings.

Midtown Brews and the Women's Enterprise Network are two Northeast Ohio based I-Open business collaborations that advance regional-to-global industry networks. Both are tested, successful models of integrating technology at the intersections of face-to-face and online network building. I-Open Civic Forums turbo charge activity and with the help of social media, local transparency is improved and global issues generally not addressed openly, are.

Collaborations between technology companies and network organizations like I-Open are invaluable because they advance cycles of industry improvement in social process and tool building. I-Open applications are unique because they focus on building enterprise under the mantra of open source ideology across social, economic, and environmental sectors.

Today, the Near-Time tool set has assumed a new application and brand: Strategy-Nets, an enterprise company founded by Ed Morrison that combines what was learned in those early applications to advancing strategic network building for economic development across regions.

By continuing to launch industry collaborations between technology companies and I-Open process, innovations capable of sparking technology and social process advances emerge. The added bonus is a footprint of trusted networks, evolving mindsets, collaborative behaviors, and plenty of competitive enterprise opportunities for any technology innovator prepared to grasp them.

Copyright 2011 Betsey Merkel and I-Open. Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works. Institute for Open Economic Networks (I-Open) 2563 Kingston Road Cleveland OH 44118 Phone: 216-220-0172 Web: http://i-open.posterous.com/

 

About I-OPEN

I-Open is the architect of a new type of civic infrastructure.

This infrastructure connects entrepreneurs and their ideas to resources and capabilities in established organizations and institutions.

Learn more across these I-Open platforms:
I-Open http://i-open-2.strategy-nets.net
Facebook I-Open http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=35942064712&ref=ts
Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/iopen/sets/
Friendfeed http://friendfeed.com/iopen
Livestream http://www.livestream.com/iopen/
Posterous http://i-open.posterous.com/
Scribd http://www.scribd.com/I-Open
Slideshare http://www.slideshare.net/IOpen2
Twitter http://twitter.com/iopen2
Vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/user1999383
You Tube http://www.youtube.com/user/IOpen2

Copyright 2010 Betsey Merkel http://www.betseymerkel.extendr.com/ and I-Open http://i-open.org/. Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works. Institute for Open Economic Networks (I-Open) 4415 Euclid Ave 3rd Fl Cleveland, Ohio 44103 USA

I-Open Civic Forums Strengthen Entrepreneurship & Accelerate Business Dev in Network Economies

I-Open is a shared knowledge network for civic, business, government, and academic leaders in Open Source Economic Development.

This backgrounder begins with an overview of the value Civic Forums offer to entrepreneurs and local business development, followed by, generally, how I-Open is organized, where it originated from, and who has contributed to it making it what it is today – an educational resource for communities and their regions.

We hope you’ll add your comments here.

Building Collaborative Communities

This presentation provides an introduction to building face-to-face and online collaborative communities that generate social capital and transformative initiatives in Open Source Economic Development.

Collaborative communities form from I-Open Civic Forums, a simple but disciplined process to accelerate place based, globally connected innovation and entrepreneurship.

Learn from the wisdom of civic leaders across these I-Open communities:

    •    Facebook I-Open http://www.facebook.com/pages/I-Open/170817416694?ref=ts
    •    Flickr     http://www.flickr.com/people/iopen/
    •    Friendfeed http://friendfeed.com/iopen
    •    Livestream http://www.livestream.com/iopen/
    •    Posterous http://i-open.posterous.com/
    •    Scribd http://www.scribd.com/I-Open
    •    Slideshare http://www.slideshare.net/IOpen2
    •    Twitter http://twitter.com/iopen2
    •    Vimeo http://tiny.cc/106p0
    •    You Tube http://tiny.cc/j5rse
 
Copyright 2011 Betsey Merkel and I-Open. Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works. Institute for Open Economic Networks (I-Open) 2563 Kingston Road Cleveland OH 44118 Phone: 216-220-0172 Web: http://i-open.posterous.com/

I-Open Analytics Offer a Framework for Building Civic Networks

This conversation and e-mail Matrix, designed by Betsey Merkel, Co-Founder and Director, The Institute for Open Economic Networks (I-Open), is an example of how I-Open Civic Forum conversations were organized in Northeast Ohio from 2006 through 2009.

Conversations are informed by interviews contributed to I-Open by leaders in civic, academic, government and business. Interviews reveal new insights and innovation opportunities in both social and economic industry that can not only be shared, but improved upon in guided I-Open Civic Forum discussions.

Matrices are helpful to guide the intent and focus of new conversations in Open Source Economic Development exploring investment categories of the Innovation Framework, and topics representing citizen priorities affecting education, economic, and workforce development.

In the past, we most often associated "analytics" to mean measuring what we got out of any effort, in terms of profit. Today we still need to measure output, but we also need to organize how and where we are adding to change the results of our activities.

Conversations in the "Civic Space" - the space outside the four walls of any organization - build trust, and trust builds networks. These are the important starting points to build transformative initiatives and ultimately, new businesses.

This matrix points to the need for communities and regions to participate at higher levels of organization, process, and tools to identify, connect, and align creativity and resources for transformative, sustainable innovation.

The result of the efforts outlined in this matrix are described in the I-Open Press Release 01-18-10 posted to this blog at http://i-open.posterous.com/civic-networks-prepare-people-and-communities

You can learn more about I-Open at http://i-open-2.strategy-nets.net

Copyright 2010 Betsey Merkel http://www.betseymerkel.extendr.com/ and I-Open http://i-open.org/. Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works. Institute for Open Economic Networks (I-Open) 4415 Euclid Ave 3rd Fl Cleveland, Ohio 44103 USA

Innovating with Higher Levels of Organization, Process, and Tools

The 2003-2005 Center for Regional Economic Issues (REI) Civic Forum Program Matrix was designed by Betsey Merkel while working with the REI team (Ed Morrison, Susan Altshuler, Matt Kozink, Dennis Coughlin) to organize Civic Forum conversations in Northeast Ohio from 2003 through 2005.

Civic Forum conversations connect people and their ideas to education, economic, and workforce development through the generation of transformative industry cluster initiatives.

REI.Tuesdays Civic Forums were convened from the Center for Regional Economic Issues (REI), Case Western Reserve University at the Weatherhead School of Business. Leaders from business, academic, civic, and government created new conversations about exploring civic priorities, shared ideas for industry innovation, and worked together to launch transformative initiatives. Learn more about REI Civic Forums.

The Civic Forum Matrix points to the need for communities and regions to participate at higher levels of organization, process, and tools to identify, connect, and align creativity and resources for transformative, sustainable innovation.

The REI.Tuesdays Matrix offers an example of a tool to strengthen the design of new conversations focused on aspects of Open Source Economic Development.

You can learn more about I-Open here.

Learn more about the I-Open Civic Forum process designed by Betsey Merkel and how your community or region can begin to adopt a sustainable practice of building networks, generating social capital, and collaborating to build transformative initiatives for prosperity.

Copyright 2010 Betsey Merkel http://www.betseymerkel.extendr.com/ and I-Open http://i-open.org/. Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works. Institute for Open Economic Networks (I-Open) 4415 Euclid Ave 3rd Fl Cleveland, Ohio 44103 USA