Here’s the question… Are the regional organizations, i.e. EDA regions, Tourism, EMS and the like, pulling our counties together into cohesive groups, weaving the counties into interrelated groups or pulling the local leaders apart as they respond to the needs of different regions with different characteristics?
Below is a graph of the counties and some of the different regional groups they are connected to. The visualization uses an experimental tool from Google called Fusion Tables (you may notice some strange actions).
The orange dots represent different regional organizations and the blue dots are the counties of Kansas. As you can see there are a few clusters of counties that have similar allegiances and they get pulled together into large masses in the view. Other counties, for instance Morris or Marion, are relatively isolated and pulled between many groups. You can use your mouse to hover over the county or group to highlight the direct connection. What might this mean to the local leaders in the region? How might this effect how services are provided?
There are potential advantages of either tightly clustered groups of counties that know how to work together or highly interwoven network that provide opportunities to share knowledge. We present the visualization to spur conversation about the composition of regional groups.
The Kansas Technology Enterprise Corporation (KTEC) and the Economic Development Administration (EDA) Denver Region recently partnered to develop a statewide Technology Cluster Development Strategy to identify potential technology and/or regional industry clusters. Through better understanding of Kansas-based resources, strengths, and underutilized assets, KTEC intends to further advance innovation and entrepreneurship, as well as productivity throughout the state. By assessing current Kansas technology clusters and the potential for transferable skills/resources that can extend beyond a single cluster, KTEC can support and develop existing clusters, while nurturing emerging clusters and form new clusters. This process will be forward-looking, anticipating economic changes, and positioning the state for market-based responses to changing economic conditions.
AMI, through this project, will assist KTEC to execute the cluster development strategy through active participation in the strategy development team and mapping social networks and innovation networks specific to targeted technology clusters. Once preliminary networks are identified, they will be analyzed to look for the structural holes and network stars to help weave stronger networks in the region. AMI’s efforts will specifically focus on networks in the technology based clusters as identified by KTEC and to build sociographs for those identified clusters. These sociographs will be used to strengthen the networks by connecting the unconnected. This would include developing a communication channel between the companies that are a part of the identified clusters as well as creating a discussion forum for the clusters members that would allow them to exchange ideas and knowledge leading to innovation and new opportunities.
Project Objective
To support the development/implementation of the Kansas Technology Cluster Development Strategy through mapping social and innovation networks specific to targeted technology clusters.
To support efforts to advance Kansas prosperity, the Kansas Department of Commerce (KDOC) intends to help Kansas companies develop a 21st century supply chain network for the state. The aim is to increase connectedness of the Kansas companies and assist them in maintaining and/or improving their global competitiveness. Helping Kansas companies network with one another and develop a statewide supply chain will help cut costs for companies while increasing productivity for the state manufacturers.
Kansas manufacturers will benefit from collaboration with other Kansas manufacturers as suppliers and/or customers based on the capacity, capability, location and equipment of the company. The manufacturers will also have the opportunity to share knowledge of additional capacity or scarcity. Most importantly, Kansas companies will have a powerful tool to pursue new opportunities in collaboration with each other. Increasingly opportunities demand more resources than any one company can muster. The system will focus on manufacturing industries, to provide manufacturers with a resource targeted to the technical and business specifics of manufacturing and developing products.
The project aims to design a tool to fill this networking need and draws heavily on the experience from AMI’s Wind Supply Chain Development Project. AMI is presently in partnership with the Great Lakes WIND Network (GLWN) to assist KDOC in identifying active and prospective wind industry supply chain manufacturers. Based on insights gained to date from its wind supply chain development efforts, AMI proposes to prototype a business profiling and networking system that will enable Kansas manufacturers to more efficiently identify viable Kansas partners. This is a prototype project that will be piloted in a fourteen county region of South Central Kansas.
Project Goal
Pilot a Business to Business (B2B) network among Kansas manufacturers to readily connect potential customers, suppliers, or collaboration partners within the state.
Project Objectives
- Facilitate denser and stronger networks between Kansas companies, resulting in effective collaborative ties between companies and an increased global competitiveness throughout the state.
- Develop a manufacturing business profiling process that characterizes Kansas manufacturing companies in terms of, but not limited to, markets, product, services, design/engineering, manufacturing processes and capacities, workforce, work culture, expansion capacity, financial stability and transferable competencies.
- Create a system schematic of a repository for the business profiles in form of a database with easy accessibility available to all Kansas companies to search for collaborators and request to edit/update their own information.
- Generate a business finding concept that improves mutual awareness among Kansas companies and makes competencies and capabilities more visible to encourage companies to find matching customers, suppliers, and collaboration partners.
- Design a prototype system with search and filtering capabilities that can help manufacturing companies in the state network based on their capabilities and capacity.
|
|