Carrying out Flagship initiatives is a test of our region's newly found ability to collaborate. The test has to do with whether those of us living and doing business in the Kalamazoo-Battle Creek area and beyond can visualize and commit to working together for an outcome that will benefit everyone. Because Flagships are larger and more complex, they also represent a tougher test of our region's willingness to support our economy in new ways. These initiatives serve as important but modest steps towards increasing the region's competitiveness in the global economy.

The Regional EDGE process determined three specific sets of challenges and collaborative actions across the majority of our region's cluster working groups. While descriptions of the challenge varied and actions emphasized different approaches, the proponents found that they were all committed to the same goals.

The three Flagships and one special initiative are described below.

• Flagship One: Improving Regional Air Service
• Flagship Two: Creating A "One-Stop Shop" for Development
• Flagship Three: Training and Retaining Workers
• Special Flagship: 21st Century

Technical Training Center

These flagships represent a solid starting point for improving our region's economic competitiveness. They focus on fundamental challenges that affect business success at many levels. The first Flagship addresses challenges of a limited transportation system. Improving the regional air transportation capacity was considered by many cluster groups as a key component to enhanced competitiveness. A competitive region clearly needs to be accessible to global markets.

The second Flagship focuses on facilitating business retention, expansion and attraction. Prevalent across all cluster working groups was concern that the region had an anti-growth climate and complex regulatory structure. In a region with a two county metropolitan area, economic development should not pit communities against each other nor discourage business growth with fragmented or inconsistent development policies and practices. Moreover, members of the region need to avoid intra-regional business competition by recognizing that jobs in one community create taxpayers and economic impact throughout other communities. Many companies see this apparently unfriendly business environment as a major barrier to local retention, expansion and attraction.

Finally, the third Flagship and special initiative attempt to overcome what clusters see as the critically inadequate supply of skilled labor that plagues virtually all industries in the region. Companies across all clusters are constrained by a common set of workforce issues: labor shortages and difficulties in recruitment compounded by inappropriately matched skills training.

Successful implementation of these three Flagship initiatives together will make a major contribution to the capacity of this region to support business competitiveness, and to expand and attract firms. Once action is taken on these issues, there will be continuing opportunity to identify and undertake new Flagships, harnessing the region's growing experience in collaboration.

Each of these Flagships is detailed below to introduce our region to these new efforts in collaborative problem solving which Regional EDGE will focus on over the coming months.