A model of collaboration between business, government and allied organizations dedicated to quality of life improvements is gaining high marks from those who measure and promote regionalism.
Kudos came for The West Michigan Strategic Alliance prior to celebration of its 10th anniversary at its annual State of the Region event, with findings on how West Michigan measures up against 26 other regions and is a model national case study of regional collaboration.
WMSA was formed in 2000 by a group of community leaders from across West Michigan who viewed collaboration among businesses and institutions and across municipal and county lines to be a key to the quality of life in the region. WMSA's pursuit of its mission “to be a catalyst for regional collaboration” and resulted in a number of successful initiatives, including: Green Infrastructure, WIRED (Workforce Innovation in Regional Economic Development), West Michigan Internship Initiative, Regional Indicators, Regional Sustainable Manufacturing, and Clean Cities.
“Over the past decade, we've formed thousands of trusting relationships across the region and across government, business and institutional sectors,” said James Brooks, the Holland businessman who is one of the WMSA founders. “Our capacity to work together to respond to common challenges and opportunities has improved immensely.”
WMSA's success in regional leadership was noted in a report by the Washington, DC-based Council on Competitiveness (http://www.compete.org/). The report, “National Prosperity/Regional Leadership,” features WMSA as one of five case studies of regional collaboration in the United States. WMSA was specifically praised for its 2002 “Common Framework” report that started creating a regional mindset in West Michigan.
“The new tasks of regional leadership start with telling the region's story and concludes with establishing metrics to keep score of how you are doing,‟ said Samuel Leiken, vice president of the Council and keynote speaker at the State of the Region event. “West Michigan has done those things particularly well.”
The Council analysis ranks West Michigan ranks 9th overall among 26 similar U.S. regions on key social, economic, and environmental indicators. West Michigan was 17th on economic indicators, 10th on social indicators, and 6th on key environmental indicators. This years report added achievement targets for 2015 on each of the 15 indicators. In keeping with the axiom that you can't measure, WMSA is also at work creating metrics for more specific initiatives.
“The achievement targets for five years down the road are new this year,” reports Greg Northrup, WMSA president. “Our first several reports were benchmark data. We added the 26 peer regions last year. Now we want to not only know where we stand but set specific targets to improve our quality of life on these key indicators.”
The West Michigan Strategic Alliance fosters collaboration among the businesses, institutions and governmental units serving more than 1.4 million people living in a eight-county region including: Allegan, Barry, Ionia, Kent, Montcalm, Muskegon, Newaygo and Ottawa. WMSA works to encourage a regional mindset and foster collaboration on critical issues that impact how residents live, learn, work and play. Additional information is available at http://www.wm-alliance.org/
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