Valdis Krebs in BWeek Innovation article

The latest issue of Business Week highlights social network analysis and points to the work of our colleague Valdis Krebs. Read more [1].  As we have been saying for some time, Valdis (a CSU grad) is an international expert on a remarkably important field for Northeast Ohio: innovation.

Remarkably, while I was at REI, we became the first customer in Northeast Ohio to buy Valdis' software, InFlow. Slow adoption of innovation comes from cognitive blind spots -- what we do not see -- and poor civic behavior that erodes trust and disrupts networks.

Through his work in social network analysis, Valdis has been teaching us how networks form, what are the good characteristics of networks, what behaviors build networks, and how best to ignore bad behavior.

Valdis is working with Holly Harlan at E4S [2], and we will be using his insights as we begin implementing the County's economic development action plan. The plan follows the Open Source Economic Development model which Valdis is helping us build. Specifically, we are mapping North Coast clusters and new innovation zones. You can see the emerging network in Midtown by visiting either Real NEO [3] or Midtown Wednesday blog: http://midtownwednesdays.blogspot.com/ [4]

You can download the County action plan -- which outlines clusters and zones -- from this page [5].

Valdis, Jack Ricchuito, June Holley and I will be teaching a two day seminar on Open Source Economic Development at Baldwin Wallace on March 27 and 28. More details later.

Last week, I was in Oklahoma City, where I-Open will be working to build the innovation and entrepreneurship strategy for that region. We used Valdis' software to illustrate how open networks of collaboration -- with colleges and universities embedded in these networks -- form the basis of a regional innovation strategy.

We are all honored to be working with Valdis.