Last summer, the Fund for Our Economic Future (FFEF) awarded a grant to the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center (OARDC) of The Ohio State University (OSU) to establish an Agriculture-Bioscience Industry Cluster (Ag-Bio Cluster) in Northeast Ohio (NEO).  The goal of this cluster is to make a clear and positive impact on the Advance NorthEast Ohio (ANEO) / FFEF Economic Dashboard, namely, increase capability through a skilled workforce and R&D, commercialize technologies, and assure racial inclusion and income equality. 

The Ag-Bio Cluster is well-positioned to deliver on this goal because of a high potential for relocalization (Michael Shuman's LOIS concept: Local Ownership, Import Substitution) of food systems, green energy systems, and distributed manufacturing systems throughout NEO.  The LOIS trend certainly opens the door for large-scale operations in agriculture and biomass that employ a workforce of hundreds.  More importantly, though, it heavily favors the development of highly decentralized and tightly networked, owner-operated small-businesses numbering in the thousands. 

The primary interest of the Ag-Bio Cluster Leadership Council (ABCLC), which was chartered to provide oversight for activities outlined in the grant proposal, is to slow outsourcing and speed relocalization of work and jobs within the Ag-Bio Cluster.  This means business development.  In this first phase of the grant that ends in June 2010, the objective is to solicit worthy business ideas from people throughout NEO and assist them to flesh-out their ideas into business cases that are ready for robust business planning or start-up in subsequent phases. 

The ABCLC has commissioned several tools to assist its business development; among these are the following:

•  GIS-referenced mapping process:  Documents the locations of assets within the social, economic, and natural ecosystems of NEO in support of modeling and scenario planning 
• Triage process: Assesses incoming business cases and directs the people behind them to appropriate resources, e.g., connections, mentoring, training, information, etc., who can help strengthen and position their business cases for greater investment potential, sustainability, and triple bottom line impact
• Community Investment Portfolio (CIP) management process: Compiles business cases that completed the triage process and are ready for start-up, establishes a total investment value for the portfolio based on the potential benefit to local communities and likely rate of return of the business cases, administers the flow of business cases in and out of the portfolio such that the total value is sustained
  

As the press for local ownership and import substitution increases, the door is open to slingshot adoption of relocalization practices.  This presents a near certainty of one job in relocalized food, energy, or manufacturing created per one thousand people.  Given there is a population of 4 million among the rural communities and urban neighborhoods of NEO, that puts 4,000 people to work.  Many of these jobs are nested within micro-businesses operated by a self-employed owner with annual gross receipts of less than $150,000 and a requirement for less than $15,000 in start-up capital.  Clearly, the owners / operators of such small-scale businesses would benefit significantly from the mapping, triage, and portfolio management tools commissioned by the ABCLC initiatives.  What business to be in, how to run the business, and how to secure funds to start-up the business are questions these tools will help answer.  The sooner they are available, the better!

The development of these tools is tailor-made for a openly collaborative approach.  Customers, suppliers, partners, and colleagues will be involved by the hundreds for any business no matter how small.  Information about agriculture, green energy, and distributed manufacturing increases by the second due to the experiences of millions of people everywhere in the world.  However, the interplay among social, economic, and natural ecosystems within a given geographic area is exceedingly complex and it engages fully along the local-to-global continuum.  It is more than one organization, like the ABCLC or the FFEF, can control.  It is more than one networking and collaboration forum like LocalFoodSystems.org (LFS) can support.  It requires multiple networks, communities of practice, ecosystems, and forums that are willing to communicate, interact, collaborate, and reciprocate for mutual benefit.

The next Ag-Bio Cluster Leadership Council (ABCLC) meeting is this coming Monday, January 11th.  Updates on the triage and CIP management processes are on the agenda.  Solicitation for business cases is underway and will get into full-swing over the next 6-8 weeks.  Early indications suggest dozens of business cases will be advanced.  The tools mentioned above need full attention to get them ready for action.  Attached is a paper that outlines an approach the ABCLC can take to accomplish this.  But it would benefit by having the perspective and active engagement brought by members of LFS beyond the ABCLC group.  For this reason, this is posted to the Advance NorthEast Ohio Partners group and it is made public so it displays on the home page for viewing by anyone who visits the site.

Beyond that, in the spirit of open collaboration and engaging multiple networks, this message and attachment will be cross-posted to OpenKollab, a collaboration forum co-founded by Suresh Fernando, who is with Radical Inclusion.  Members of OpenKollab are working in collaboration with the Forward Foundation to develop a Pooled Fund.  Many of the concepts outlined on OpenKollab and in the Pooled Fund project complement the objectives of the ABCLC tools.  In particular, they offer a track to funding alternatives that could prove useful for business cases in the CIP.

Several participants in OpenKollab also have interests in linking data "flows" across information "ecosystems" so that there is a far greater efficiency in accessing any data regardless of location, cross-posting information from one site to another, and deriving knowledge in response to questions, concerns, and opportunities of interest by all who participate in the larger system.  Sam Rose, who features prominently in the development and maintenance of LFS, and Greg Boulos, who is a Co-Principal Investigator on the USDA grant that underwrites LFS, are leaders in the drive to take the performance of LFS to the next level through linkages to "flows" modules in development by OpenKollab, Forward Foundation, and others.  A rewarding experience for all participants is anticipated.

Let us know what you think.  We are open for feedback, suggestions, ideas, and opinions!  And stay tuned for future update postings as the business cases and the tools to process them come online...