While everyone is talking about the need for innovation to serve as the growth catalyst for U.S. businesses, job growth and the economy overall, a group of leaders in the Tri-Valley region is taking action.Last week, the Innovation Tri-Valley initiative (ITV) was launched at a gathering of over 300 regional business, educational, civic and political leaders (news story and press release).

Marty Beard, the key executive leading the Innovation Tri-Valley effort and President of Sybase 365, a subsidiary of Sybase, In., recently explained that, “What we are doing in the Tri-Valley may very well be defining a new model for regions around the U.S. to get moving again as leaders in innovation. It is not only an opportunity to leverage the tremendous assets we have, but also a need and an obligation as leaders to do this for our companies and for our country.” Marty’s enthusiasm, determination and drive have helped rally a highly diverse group of leaders into what has become a collaborative effort across the region.

The ITV leadership team believes that approaching the significant challenge of attracting businesses to the region and more importantly helping them to scale operations and jobs in the region, requires an innovative approach to the field of economic development.They leveraged first an accelerated transformation process tailored for regional revitalization based on the process in BIG Ideas to BIG Results (Kanazawa and Miles, FT Press / Pearson Hall, 2008). This was in an effort to move more quickly, engage and align a broad and diverse group of leaders from all areas into a single and focused vision and plan for success.

In addition, we combined into the process a holistic framework for modeling the Ecology of Innovation, a well researched and internationally applied model of success from Dr. Tapan Munroe, former Cheif Economist of PG&E and author of “What Makes Silicon Valley Tick?” (Nova Visa Publishing, 2009).

It has been a great experience working with the key leaders of the Innovation Tri-Valley effort and Tapan Munroe. There is a real feeling that we are making progress in ways that many people in the region and beyond did not think possible. It’s amazing what can happen when you align leaders and resources on a few very important initiatives that support a shared vision that was built in a high-engagement way. Innovation is about finding new and more effective ways of doing things, especially in situations where there are tough problems that can’t seem to be solved with traditional means. The challenge of reshaping our innovation hubs for success in the global economy is a critical need and requires innovative approaches to solve. The Innovation Tri-Valley initiative is headed in the right direction and is demonstrating a new model of success…an innovation in itself.

Michael Kanazawa is Chief Executive of Bedrock Dissero and co-author of Big Ideas to Big Results.

Image from www.futurity.org

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