‘Just clusters’ try to reach critical mass
The proximity of the 1,400 businesses in Spokane’s East Central area may be more than geographic. The neighborhood could be a laboratory for a new concept called “just clusters.”
Clusters has been an economic development buzzword for some time. In a nutshell, the theory is that related businesses located closely together foster a network of associated suppliers, shippers, educators and other partners that feed off each other, creating an economic engine greater than the sum of its parts. Silicon Valley is the classic example.
In Spokane, the obvious cluster would be the medical community.
“Just” adds a social equity spin to clustering. Advocates believe communities can link their economic clusters to disadvantaged neighborhoods, to the benefit of business and community alike. The idea seems like a natural for Spokane, which suffers less from unemployment than its does from underemployment.
The Minneapolis-based Northwest Area Foundation saw enough progress toward these kinds of relationships in the Spokane area that it recently sponsored a two-day workshop on just clusters attended by more than 100 government, academic and business officials. The potential is as tantalizing as the concept is hard to define.
Workshop leader Phil Psilos says definition is less important than execution, and the fostering of entrepreneurial skills that generate 70 percent of economic growth. The key to creating just clusters is identifying early on the business sectors that are coalescing into clusters and then, using community-based organizations, providing the appropriate training and other assistance. The Community Colleges of Spokane have filled at least the training half of that equation for years.
“They really seem to get it,” he says.
In the East Central neighborhood, that longtime relationship has broadened with the addition of Eastern Washington University. Rhosetta Rhodes, director of the Center for Service Learning and Continuing Education at Spokane Falls Community College, says a federal grant has funded an ongoing study by Eastern of business needs, as well as the education levels of neighborhood residents. That work, supplemented by other studies undertaken by Washington State University students, is painting a richly detailed picture of the neighborhood that will help planners anticipating potential growth in the nearby University District.
With all the moving parts, Rhodes says, “We’re kind of there as convenors.”
Neighborhood activist Jerry Numbers says he hopes the studies will identify businesses that, with the help of the neighborhood and educational institutions, might evolve into a cluster.
“Is it going to be a cluster as they know it? I don’t know,” Numbers says. “We’re not really doing clusters. What we’re doing is neighborhood groups.”
But introducing the idea of just clusters has helped participants look at their efforts in a different way, he adds.
Numbers and other workshop participants came away with a new or reinforced conviction that the nature of whatever clusters exist or might be developed in the community are less important than the nurturing of the entrepreneurial spirit and skills that will help them succeed.
Connect Northwest Bill Kalivas seizes on a baseball analogy used by one speaker, who likened an entrepreneur’s progression to that of a minor league player who improves his skills thanks to the coaching he receives as he advances towards the major leagues. Since the workshop, teams have organized to look at several cluster “prospects” like recreation, telecommunications and energy technology to determine their potential. Reports will be submitted to a follow-up gathering expected later this year.
Stacy Millett, a community coordinator for the Northwest Area Foundation, says workshop backers want to see how community thinking on just clusters evolves. “Perhaps this will be catalytic,” she says.
The foundation, by the way, was created in 1934 by the son of railroad magnate J.J. Hill, founder of the Great Northern Railroad. Foundation assets, $438 million at the end of its last fiscal year, are dedicated to fighting poverty in the eight states once served by the Great Northern. Given the rich history of the railroad in Spokane — the Great Northern once employed hundreds in its Hillyard shops — the renewed relationship is welcome.