Business & Community Innovation
Our Business and Community Innovation program seeks to significantly increase the competitiveness of companies and advance sustainable prosperity in communities through collaborations that build scalable resilience in the face of an increasingly volatile world economy.
We focus on policies and practices that advance skill development and job creation by bringing together business and community stakeholders. This is done through alignment and innovation at the intersection of industry and business development, employer talent needs, and workforce readiness.
Our intended outcomes include substantially increasing the number of:
- High-performing leaders who foster inclusive collaboration as a pathway to innovation, investment in effective talent development strategies, and shared community impact
- Swift, system-wide improvements that strengthen industry talent supplies through strong partnerships among employers and educators
- Community residents growing their own businesses and creating their own jobs
- Employment opportunities for residents through community-based partnerships and alignment of education, business, and community stakeholder resources
Business and Industry Partnerships
The business & industry partnerships program supports competitiveness and sustainable prosperity for companies and their employees. This program area seeks to advance strategies that increase the agility of companies to swiftly develop talent and respond to market opportunities.
To this end, our business and industry partnership efforts focus on:
- Facilitating the creation and sustainability of industry partnerships to address skills gaps and longer term talent development needs, and identifying new funding models to support them
- Addressing the complete talent equation within companies, including leadership capacity development and workforce planning
- Strengthening the private- and public-sector supports available to help companies effectively address talent attraction, retention, and development needs
Sustainable Communities
The sustainable communities program supports competitiveness and sustainable prosperity by creating multiple pathways to jobs for local residents. This program area helps stakeholders cultivate community-based, sustainable jobs and prepare residents for emerging job opportunities.
To this end, our efforts to build sustainable communities focus on:
- Catalyzing and supporting sustainability-driven and community-based innovations in local industries to address unmet local market opportunities and create job opportunities for residents
- Building capacity of community organizations to effectively invest in and implement innovative talent and career development strategies for local residents
- Cultivating small resident-owned businesses and social enterprises and helping bring them to scale, supporting residents to create jobs for themselves and others