Building Enterprise-Ready
Places, People, Programs, and Regional Identity

Today, citizens in the 37-county West Alabama – East Mississippi (WAEM) WIRED zone are just beginning to identify this area as a “region.”  Parts of it lie in West Alabama, East Mississippi, the Black Belt, and the Pine Belt..  Perhaps the only across-the-region attribute is an historic one that applies to a much broader area, that of an area with a low-skill, low-wage workforce.  The WAEM aWIRED grant proposes to change this, to transform the perception and reality of this area into a region that attracts, grows, and retains people, jobs, and wealth.  This will be done through a layered, but integrated “build-it” process. 

WAEM’s vision is to transform a mostly rural collection of people and places into an enterprising region known for its innovative programs in entrepreneurship, workforce development, and wealth creation.  We call that being “Enterprise-Ready.” 

“Building Enterprise-Ready places, people, programs, and regional identity” is our mission.

An Enterprise-Ready place is a community:

  • with infrastructure, workforce, and incentives ready to retain and attract industry;
  • with training, coaching, financing, and facilities ready to support entrepreneurs who grow community-based jobs and bring wealth to communities;
  • where business formation and innovation occur easily and often; and
  • bwith leaders who have a “can do” attitude and find assets to build on and opportunities to seize.

Enterprise-Ready people:

  • have skills and credentials needed to keep and attract growth industries and high-paying jobs;
  • start new and innovative businesses and become successful business and civic entrepreneurs;
  • are students who graduate from high school ready to take on technology-based jobs; and
  • have “can do” attitudes that help them build, innovate, work hard, and move ahead.

Enterprise-Ready programs are those innovative programs that:

  • help people and places become Enterprise-Ready;
  • coach people and communities to engage in Enterprise-Ready development activities; and
  • train and educate students, workers, entrepreneurs, leaders and others in Enterprise-Ready skills.

cAn Enterprise-Ready region is one:

  • full of Enterprise-Ready places and people, communities, workers, entrepreneurs, students, and leaders…with an array of Enterprise-Ready programs to support them; 
  • that knows, and builds on, its competitive strengths;
  • that engages its diverse citizens and communities around innovative regional opportunities; and
  • that builds a regional development agenda with the scale and clout of the whole region behind it.

“Enterprise-Ready” can be defined as “prepared for and committed to value-added ‘build-it’ activity,” whether individually based, organization based, community based, or region based.  The WAEM Place Building Process focuses on asset-based economic development, enterprise friendly communities with entrepreneur support systems, innovative workforce systems, and skill development as key value-adding activities for Enterprise-Ready regional transformation.   

Region building takes the commitment of time and resources from institutions and champions.  Prior to this grant, The Montgomery Institute (TMI) was the only institution with a mission to work across the Alabama and Mississippi state lines to recruit champions and do region building.  The Commission on the Future of East Mississippi and West Alabama initiated by TMI laid the groundwork for this WIRED initiative.  Eight community and junior colleges, four in West Alabama and four in East Mississippi, joined with TMI to pursue the WIRED grant.  All, through their presidents, pledged to stand-up and embed in their institutions the capacity required by Goal 1.  As a result, a form WAEM Alliance was formed by these colleges in January 2008.

Region building also takes the engagement of communities and citizens from across the region.  The Goal 1 Region Building Process, guided by the RUPRI Center for Regional Competitiveness, brought together leaders and potential champions from across the region to engage in enterprise and innovation based planning and development activities.  The highlight of this work was a Governors’ Summit hosted by Gov. Bob Riley and Gov. Haley Barbour.  Leaders participating in these events learned the language of enterprise and innovation, worked together to identify key regional assets and regional approaches to leveraging those assets, and began forming regional networks and identity. 

Work at the top, however, is insufficient to transform a region.  So, Goal 1 also addresses developing Enterprise-Ready champions at the community level.  As Indiana has learned through its Rural Indiana Strategy for Excellence1, “strong leadership and civic engagement is a precursor to, not a follower of, economic growth and development.”  When local and regional champions align their focus, regional identity begins to form. 

The next layer of the development process focuses on transforming the way the region and its communities create jobs.  While continuing what the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning (CAEL) calls “the great buffalo hunt,” which is to lure major employers to the area, the region must build strategies to create and retain jobs from other sources.  This is especially true for rural communities.  Drawing from the new Appalachian Regional Commission Strategic Plan2  and other successful rural endeavors, Goal 2 seeks to identify and cultivate entrepreneurs who will use local assets (Goal 1) as the cornerstones for new businesses and job opportunities.  North Carolina is finding this approach works through its Institute for Rural Entrepreneurship3.  Goal 2 stands-up and embeds at community and junior colleges the capacity to coach rural places as they transform into Enterprise-Ready communities and provide support, technical assistance, education, and training to entrepreneurs.  With extensive training from the RUPRI Center for Rural Entrepreneurship, the colleges have engaged in Place Building and begun to build regional networks. Such entrepreneurial activity, integrated with Goal 1’s development activities, begins transformation of community and regional civic culture to one with an Enterprise-Ready focus.

The MyBiz Entrepreneur Network consists of local, state, and national Resource Partners identified and profiled by college and TMI staff.  The related MyBiz.am website provides a zipcode-based, searchable database to allow entrepreneurs to find nearby service providers who can meet particular needs.  Both states are moving to extend MyBiz beyond the WAEM Region to serve both states in their entirety.

On September 6, 2007, the WAEM Commission affirmed merging Goal 1 and Goal 2 processes into the WAEM Place Building Program.

The third layer of the development process relies on building innovative, Enterprise-Ready access and delivery workforce systems at community and junior colleges to brand the regional workforce, improve skills, and enhance economic developers’ chances of keeping and luring business and industry.  Goal 3 drew on the assets, gap, and trend analyses in Goal 1 and guidance from the region’s economic developers to: 

  • identify and target advanced manufacturing for which innovative workforce systems should provide training (other sectors to be developed include entrepreneurship (see Goal 2), wood products, healthcare, tourism, innovative energy, warehouse and distribution, high technology, branded foods, and business services),
  • establish a regional Workforce Training Framework to guide development of advanced manufacturing training systems,
  • identify an Amatrol-based Anytime Anywhere e-Learning System for advanced manufacturing training system with innovative access and delivery of needed skill training,
  • provide Career Readiness Certification and a regional Modern Multi-skill Manufacturing (M3) Credential system, and
  • identify technology needed to enhance such systems. 

Enterprise-Ready leaders, entrepreneurs, and training systems are coming together in the WAEM Region to create the reality of an Enterprise-Ready regional identity.  This model conforms with the model presented by the Rural Policy Research Institute in its March 2006 presentation, “The Current U.S. Rural Policy Framework: Toward a Regional Innovation Strategy4.”

The fourth layer of the development process is to build a pipeline of future entrepreneurs, skilled workers, and local leaders to sustain the growth of the region.  Goal 4 seeks to integrate Enterprise-Ready activities into high school curricula and youth (age 16+) programs.  We seek to bring a balance to the “take-a-job” bias embedded in most “career readiness” programming by infusing “make-a-job” entrepreneurship perspectives in high school and youth activities.  We also seek to provide better access for students to community and junior college Enterprise-Ready programs.

College staff have worked with local school districts to bring Rural Entrepreneurship through Active Learning (REAL) and the NFTE-based Southern Your Entrepreneur (SYE) programs to enterprising youth.  Likewise, access to the Amatrol Anytime Anywhere e-Learning System has been made available to instructors at the Region’s high schools.  In some cases, dual enrollment opportunities have been created between the colleges and their local schools.

Local and regional leaders developing and implementing these four layers of Enterprise-Ready activity, community and junior colleges building capacity to support such activity beyond the grant period, and regional networking and engagement will result in economic transformation and build a new identity for the region.