This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, April 11, 2011 - Gov. Jay Nixon began his week by trumpeting the latest positive movement in unemployment for Missouri, but his focus quickly shifted to a longer-range plan to boost the state's business and job prospects.
Missouri's jobless rate dropped to 9.1 percent in March, down from 9.4 percent in February, as the state added 24,300 jobs, including more than 13,000 in the St. Louis area and more than 6,000 in Kansas City.
To help keep that momentum going, Nixon and David Kerr, the state's director of economic development, released the findings from a planning process designed to identify potential growth areas and strategies to move Missouri forward over the next five years.
Discussing how the strategies and tactics fit together, the report said:
"All are vital to ensuring that Missouri can be successful in economic development in the coming five years and beyond. The strategies and tactics cannot be implemented in isolate, but rather present a holistic program that is stronger through the sum of its parts."
Noting that most of the recommendations involve action by the executive branch rather than the legislature, Nixon told a conference call with reporters Monday that leaders from all segments of the state's economy took part in drafting the report, and he wants to make sure the plan can move forward as quickly as possible.
"We're trying to make sure we have as few hurdles as possible for economic incentives and the tools that we use," he said.
He said he was particularly impressed with the emphasis on what he called the "human capital side" of the business plan, with executives stressing that they need quality workers who can carry the ideas to reality.
"It's always good to hear from the business side that they want good workers, they want well-trained workers," Nixon said, "The education part of this being such a consistent thread was interesting and illuminating."
In several places, the report points out how economic development and education are closely tied together. For example, it urges that entrepreneurship be integrated in the lesson plans of Missouri schools, both in K-12 classes and in higher education.
"Many young people simply do not see a future for themselves beyond high school or college," it said, "but change their attitudes about school when they see firsthand the uses of math, computers, science and writing in their student-run businesses."
The report was divided into target clusters of opportunity and strategies on how to help Missouri achieve those ends. Click here for the complete report.
The clusters include:
- Advanced manufacturing
- Energy solutions
- Biosciences
- Health sciences and services
- Information technology
- Financial and professional services
- Transportation and logistics
Under most of the clusters were several niche areas where the state could further concentrate. Under biosciences, for example, were plant and agricultural technology, companion and feed animal sciences and biomedical.
Nixon noted that those areas grow out of strengths found in every part of the state.
"When you're blessed with great science -- with plant science in the east and animal science in the west and the University of Missouri down the middle -- the bottom line is that exports are big. We are looking to South America. These are economies that need the products we make, and this report gives us a broad but clear road map for selling Missouri products."
Among the recommended strategies to reach the report's goals are:
- Support local developers in retaining and expanding existing businesses and employers
- Invest in technology and innovation
- Market the state aggressively to domestic and selected international audiences
- Attract, development and retain a workforce with the skills needed to succeed
- Make sure tax, incentive and regulatory policies can best support the sectors targeted for growth
- Develop a "best-in-class" foreign trade initiative
- Nurture a culture for the development of small and minority entrepreneurship
- Provide the infrastructure needed for companies and communities to succeed
Nixon noted the importance of ensuring the state eliminated what he called the "poaching" of businesses between Missouri and Illinois on the east and Kansas on the west.
"We need to try to use assets constructively, not just move back and forth," he said.
In terms of export growth areas, Nixon emphasized the importance of opening new markets, particularly in South America.
"Not very many states have been able to make that jump south," he said. "With the Olympics going to Rio, with Chile having a significant business leader running that country, with Brazil exploding in many ways, we are looking longer range.
"The key movement for us in the exporting of Missouri gods is not just east to Europe or west to Japan but south to South America."
Concluding that Missouri has shown to be resilient during hard times in the past, the report said that the state will have to be particularly creative in the future.
"Today's economy is different than any our nation has ever seen," the report said. "From global competition and the death of distance between firms, suppliers and customers to the capital and innovation resources necessary to create the jobs of tomorrow to the particular community environments preferred by knowledge and technology workers and companies, the economic development playing field has never been more challenging."
The plan is the result of work that began last May and involved more than 600 leaders from business, labor, economic development and higher education. Six regional planning teams worked with an Atlanta-based firm to gain a national perspective.
The Department of Economic Development noted that the clusters concentrate on areas that mostly sell and compete outside the Missouri market and other sectors of the state's economy, such as tourism and military installations, were not included in the study because of their unique nature.