Many citizens of this region feel this is a great place to live. The Regional EDGE effort is aimed at making it a great place to work! If we are able to carry out our initial set of Flagships and some of the cluster specific actions, then we can continually improve ourselves. That is our objective. To do that, we need to institutionalize the Kalamazoo-Battle Creek region's capacity to collaborate, through Regional EDGE. Right now our economy is in need of a competitive EDGE across each of its core industry clusters-they need to sustain and grow relative to competitors in other regions. As we increase this competitive EDGE, we will accelerate the formation of new companies and even industries. In this way-taking care of business and building new economic advantages-our region will be able to achieve its next generation economy.

This report is the first installment of our region's new economic story. The Regional EDGE Report provides:

• Assessment of the region's overall economic performance.
• Analysis of economic components and how they are changing.
• The capabilities of our economic infrastructure that supports our industries.
• The competitiveness strategies and collaborative actions developed by cluster working groups in our region.
• The Flagship initiatives that will take action on concerns shared across the region.
• Plans for Regional EDGEto support and sustain implementation of this first generation of our region's collaborative actions.