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Written by John Speck
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Thursday, 01 April 2010 |
With our 12.7% unemployment rate placing a close 3rd behind Nevada, it's obvious that the Rhode Island jobs market has a serious structural problem. It may seem glib to say, but the issues couldn't be more clear.
Businesses in Rhode Island are, in fact, creating good-paying jobs, and at a fairly good rate. That's not the problem. While increasing the rate of job creation would help indirectly, it would not get to the core problem which is this:
The overwhelming majority of Rhode Island's unemployed are not qualified even to apply for these technical, knowledge or skills based jobs. In short, we're only creating jobs, but for people who don't live here yet.
Who are these unemployed in Rhode Island? What jobs can they do? What does this have to do with Atlantic City?
More after the jump ==>
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Written by John Speck
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Thursday, 25 March 2010 |
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In these days of soaring unemployment, it might seem strange to be asking if any kind of ecomonic activity is good or bad, but the question has come up.
In this Business Week article, Scott Shane makes the case that despite high numbers of new company formations, few of these companies ever grow to any kind of scale. Creatives can create a lot of things, he seems to be saying, but jobs ain't one of 'em.
Technically, he's dead right. A strong majority of 'company creations' never go beyond a single person. There's a fair-sized minority that forms companies, but very few go beyond a few employees. It's only that tiniest sliver that start from scratch and grow to employ 100 people.
So, techically, he's right. But, technically, that's not the point.
Most people who work independently don't _want_ to grow into a big
company with a lot of overhead. Hiring employees sound kind of like a job, and, by definition,
freelancers aren't interested in having a job? @Alora posted this defense of the profession, and most of her points speak to the lifestyle that freelancers enjoy. It's pretty damn good, and I know. It used to be mine.
But I don't think that Alora speaks to Shane's basic assertion: creatives have basically zero impact on jobs creation.
So allow me...after the jump.
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Written by John Speck
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Tuesday, 16 February 2010 |
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Over the summer of 2009, the Rhode Island Economic Development
Corporation (RIEDC) held a Green Economy Roundtable - a large,
inclusive one-day workshop of about 150 people interested in developing
so-called green jobs in Rhode Island.
The roundtable produced a set of recommendations. Specifically, RIEDC
or whoever would lead this effort should focus on four initiatives that
would accelerate growth:
- Advanced manufacturing capabilities
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Develop energy efficiency capacity
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Increase innovation, R & D and commercializations
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Develop a wind power supply chain
Further, each of these "acceleration initiatives" should consider five building blocks on which they would be built:
- Capital
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Workforce Training and Education
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Behavior Change
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Business Growth and Adoption
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Policy
With this framework, RIEDC asked New Commons to help them carry this
project through its next phase: the creation of a "green economy
roadmap" that would include specific projects and some level of
implementation.
Read more about this project after the jump --->
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Written by John Speck
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Friday, 22 January 2010 |
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 Some of you may not know about my obsession with food. I'm really into cooking because I'm really into eating. And fresh ingredients are the best ingredients. Hence I'm buyer of, among other local RI foodstuffs, Rhody Fresh dairy products.
It's a smart brand. A good-sounding brand. A brand that makes you say, "Yeah, I want that." But, unless you can back up the brand with a consistent product that fulfills expectations, it works exactly once.
So I had a minor a-ha moment reaching into the dairy case to get a half gallon of 2% while thinking about an innovation-related project I'm working on.
Rhody Smart - a tagline for the RI knowledge / innovation community. It's got a nice ring, if I do say so myself. But it comes with some major problems that would have to be addressed to make it "real".
First of these is getting people from the rest of the country not to laugh when you say it.
Disappointingly bland explanation of what that means and my Top 5 Rhody Smart game-changers after the jump -->
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Written by John Speck
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Tuesday, 20 October 2009 |
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 Like so many of these little essays, this one is long past any kind of timeliness. In fact, it's only because I was rummaging around in my graphics folders that I found this graphic I created just after one of the six workshops we ran for the Creative Providence project.
Jack Templin, who by his own admission is not any kind of an artist or designer, sat on the panel focusing on the economic issues facing creatives. In his introductory remarks, he outlined something he had watched develop, and until he mentioned it, I had not put the pieces together.
The basic idea is that the IT sector would not be as successful as it is had there not been a very strong artistic / cultural component to the city's social fabric. He went on to elaborate on what I'm calling The Super-Cluster - a set of incongruous sectors that all are somehow connected to the Arts cluster.
NB: This is a two-dimensional representation of an abstract concept. All sector have some level of connection to all other sectors.
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Blog 
Preservation Future: a Conversation
Transformational Cooperative Volunteerism - John Speck