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Amazing Pace: Summit Launches Prosperity Partnership Drive to Create 100,000 Jobs by 2010 |
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To the strains of the famous gospel song Amazing Grace, the Prosperity Partnership's Regional Economic Summit got under way. An appropriate song, perhaps, as it may take amazing grace to accomplish the goal of the partnership. After all, all the partnership wants to do is forge a regional economic strategy for over three million people who live in King, Snohomish, Pierce and Kitsap counties that will drive development and investment decisions into the future. |
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December 22, 2004
Welcome to the Prosperity Partnership! The Prosperity Partnership is the Puget Sound Region's opportunity to meet the challenges posed by a more connected, highly competitive world. We're working to create 100,000 new jobs in our region by changing the way our region does business. The way the world does business is changing and the metropolitan region has emerged as the basis for competition and resources. Smart regions have recognized this and are changing the ways they operate in response - much like we're doing right here in Puget Sound. Like a successful company, a successful region must have a strategy. A successful region must also have goals. And a successful region must act quickly and decisively to reach those goals. Over 40 organizations from around the region have already signed on as partners in this effort and over 4,000 people will receive this update. For a complete list of partners, visit www.prosperitypartnership.org. Rest up over the holidays - 2005 will be a busy year for the Prosperity Partnership We'll hit the ground running in January, so get your rest now. Right after the first of the year, Cluster Working Group Participants will receive notices of the Working Group meetings, Partners will be notified of the January meeting of the Partnership Roundtable (more info below) and we'll announce our Cluster Working Group leadership. The most intense work period will be late January through April. Beginning the last week of January, Cluster Working Groups will meet approximately every three weeks to develop and refine their recommendations. The Roundtable will meet monthly to integrate and refine the recommendations, and begin building community support for implementation. In April, we hope to release the strategy and begin work to implement the action items. Get ready to do some hard work - we have an amazing pace! The Prosperity Partnership Work Program Led by the Puget Sound Regional Council, Prosperity Partnership is bringing together business, labor, government and non-profit leaders to develop and implement a comprehensive regional economic strategy by spring of 2005. The Strategy will ensure that short-term actions are consistent with our long term goals by integrating transportation and land use planning with the strategy and coordinating with existing efforts by economic development councils, chambers of commerce, non-profit organizations, workforce development councils, labor unions and governments. We have already identified the 15 industrial clusters that drive
our region's economic performance, and selected the five clusters on
which we'll focus initially: The next steps are to 1) form Cluster Working Groups on each of the five clusters, to evaluate the needs of job providers and help develop action steps for improving our region's competitiveness in each; and 2) convene our partner organizations through the Partnership Roundtable, to help the Working Groups refine their action items and integrate the strategy as a whole. Amazing Pace: Summit Launches Prosperity Partnership Drive to Create 100,000 Jobs by 2010 More than 1,100 civic, business, academic, labor and nonprofit leaders gathered Friday, November 19, at the Qwest Field Event Center to begin the work of the partnership, spearheaded by the Puget Sound Regional Council. Speakers included Governor Gary Locke, King County Executive Ron Sims, newly elected attorney general Rob McKenna, YWCA President Rita Ryder, Microsoft Senior Vice President Brad Smith, and Kathy Keolker-Wheeler, the mayor of Renton - these were just a sample of the many cities and towns represented in the room. Many of the speakers at the meeting focused on a long-standing problem for the region - its tendency to talk about issues and not act on them. If there was a theme that ran through the sometimes impassioned remarks of speakers it was that the time for talk is over. It is time for the region to act and act as a cohesive whole. "We hear the world economy is changing," said John Ladenburg, Pierce County executive and one of the co-chairs of the partnership. "That's wrong. It is not changing. It has changed." The partnership is funded by the federal Economic Development Administration, local governments and the private sector. The co-chairs are some of the region's heavy hitters - Mark Emmert, President, University of Washington; Tomio Moriguchi, Chairman and Chief Executive, Uwajimaya; Alan Mulally, President, Boeing Commercial Airplanes; Rita Ryder, President, YWCA; Brad Smith, Senior Vice President, Microsoft, and Executive Ladenburg. If there was any "news" it was the size of the meeting. There were over 1,100 people in attendance at the Summit with only a handful of no-shows when it got under way. No one could remember a larger regional gathering, or one with so many representatives from the four counties, the non-profit sector and business. |
