Angelou Report Answers the Question: “What’s Next for Lincoln?”
At the beginning of 2015, the Lincoln Partnership for Economic Development engaged Angelou Economics to develop strategic recommendations designed to make Lincoln a globally competitive city. After extensive community engagement, research of best practices of successful communities and utilizing the 30+ years of the Angelou team’s experience, the strategic plan was created and rolled out to the community at the LPED annual breakfast on June 30, 2015.
You can read the full report or download your own copy of by visiting the Partnership’s website at SelectLincoln.org. Click on the “What’s next” box to access Angelou’s work.
To ensure the Lincoln becomes globally competitive today and stays there, the Angelou team recommended the community focus on three broad, overarching strategic objectives:
• Develop world class workforce, recruit talent and infrastructure
• Nurture a globally competitive entrepreneurial ecosystem
• Strengthen collaboration among key economic assets
Once we established the report’s strategic objectives, the Partnership created three working task forces to review the areas of opportunity identified in the report: workforce, infrastructure and entrepreneurial development. The task force goals were to examine the recommendations and produce a Lincoln-specific plan of action. The three task forces completed the majority of their work in December and have presented their recommendations to the Lincoln Chamber Economic Development Corporation Board of Directors.
I want to share with you some of the initial feedback from the task force reports:
Workforce
• Create a more collaborative environment for companies to share their employee data and recruitment strategies
• Encourage sponsorships of international employees
• Embed more students with local companies while they are still in college
Entrepreneurship
• Accelerate commercialization of products
• Create and “own” an entrepreneurial event – possibly based around sports-related startups
• Enable more local capital for investing in emerging companies
Infrastructure
• Find a way to encourage a private sector provider to come into the Lincoln market and offer more competition in regards to digital connectivity, specifically fiber service to every home and business
*The task force was discussing a recommendation prior to the announcement by Nelnet and Allo Communications. In light of that announcement, the task force put forward and additional recommendation to convene another working group to study how best to market and utilize the service.
• A separate sub-committee continues to meet to discuss other potential recommendations regarding road construction funding gap, utilizing technology to create traffic efficiency and similar physical infrastructure needs.
The above list is not entirely comprehensive of all the recommendations put forward by the task force members; it is only a few highlights to illustrate their work and we have already begun to implement some of the recommendations including:
• Significant Stakeholder engagement and community involvement to make an impact on the future
• Hiring a new Director of Talent Solutions to lead workforce outreach and new programs
• Along with community partners, advances on 1 Gigabit fiber-to-home and business service
• Advocating for more targeted infrastructure spending at the local, state and federal level
As we move forward in 2016, the Partnership is working to develop a more formalized plan of action. I look forward to sharing that with you later this year. For the latest information you can also visit the “What’s Next” page on the LPED website – SelectLincoln.org
The Angelou report has laid the foundation for Lincoln’s future. The work of our citizen-volunteers and their task forces has built a great base upon that foundation. Now, it is up to all of us to move Lincoln in a positive direction.
by Wendy Birdsall, President
402-436-2350 | LCOC.com
The Chamber’s mission is to improve the lives of Lincoln residents by providing increased economic opportunity and can only be accomplished together. For more information, please contact Jaime Henning at jaimehenning@lcoc.com.