Monthly Archives: December 2011

Letter From the Director – Wrap-Up of the First Semester

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My first semester as Director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech (MI) is drawing to a close. Similar to my 60 day update, I would like to share with you selected achievements and strategic activities of the institute. The institute is now home to a number of blossoming research efforts, including a policy informatics network, expanding work on citizen engagement, critical looks at development patterns in distressed cities, and the local and global patterns of community resiliency.

Roundup on Grants and Proposals
We continue to diversify our funded research portfolio. Joe Schilling led the Metropolitan Institute’s effort to partner with the German Marshall Fund and Cleveland State to manage, mentor, and evaluate a new executive fellowship program as part of the Obama Administration’s Strong Cities, Strong Communities initiative which seeks to build capacity in six economically distressed cities—Cleveland, Detroit, Memphis, New Orleans, Fresno, and Chester, PA. Joe and his colleagues at Cleveland State will assess the impacts from the fellowship while mentoring roughly 30 professionals over a 3-year period. Maggie Cowell and I received a seed grant from the Institute for Society, Culture, and Environment to build a research program on designing resilient networks for local communities. Read more about the project here. We received an IBM Center for the Business of Government grant to study the role of citizen apps and its influence on governance. Read more about the project here. We are hoping to hear positive responses on several grant proposals we currently have under review.

New and Emerging Partnerships
An institute’s strategic alliances are one of its most valuable assets. Building winning partnerships takes time and effort, and the payoffs for both parties are not immediate. We have spent a great deal of time and effort to connect the Metropolitan Institute with our industry, non-profit, and government friends. We have formed a partnership with ACT for Alexandria, a community foundation dedicated to stimulating philanthropic giving on the local level within Alexandria, VA. The ACTion Alexandria project is a new citizen engagement platform with interactive tools to make it easier for residents to take an active role in addressing community problems. The institute will partner with Act for Alexandria and use the ACTion platform to design and test practices that encourage citizen participation using online tools. Read more on this project here. Tentative collaboration agreements are in place or being cultivated with a number of other organizations including the American Red Cross, the US Green Building Council, the International for City/County Managers Association (ICMA), and City and County of San Francisco, among others. Within Virginia Tech, we continue to work closely with our partners in the Northern Capital Region and Blacksburg on a number of collaborative efforts.

Please continue reading for updates on our work in Community Resiliency, Policy Informatics and exciting international outreach and our vision of the future.

Continue reading →

Intrapreneurship: Managing Ideas within Your Organization – New Book by Kevin Desouza

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Just published by the University of Toronto Press, available on Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble.com

Bridging academia and the corporate world, director Kevin Desouza has produced a book looking at the critical role of ideas in the success of any new venture. Intrapreneurship provides an engaging guide for both managers and employees, academic and staffers, on how to direct the flow of ideas and foster a culture of entrepreneurship within their existing structure.

Based on Kevin C. Desouza’s research and experience consulting with thirty global organizations, Intrapreneurship outlines ways to mobilize all types of ideas - from radical thinking to incremental innovations. With practical frameworks and real life examples, Intrapreneurship helps identify the value in ideas and how to leverage them to ultimately benefit your organization.

This book has received wide acclaim from scholars and practitioners. See below for a sampling of reviews:

‘Intrapreneurship offers a fresh and timely perspective on how to harness — and not kill — the power of innovation that exists inside every organization — including nonprofits. In his book, Desouza masterfully weaves academic research together with real life stories across industries to show us how to foster innovation and turn the best ideas into reality. His fusion of innovation and implementation into a single, pragmatic intrapreneurship framework is where the magic happens. This book is a must read for employees and leadership alike whether you are trying to increase profits, save the world, or both.‘ Neal Myrick, Director, Groundwire

‘As competition intensifies globally, no corporation can afford to ignore the potential of corporate entrepreneurs, or “intrapreneurs,” to drive growth and continual renewal. Kevin C. Desouza provides a new look and important contribution to the field of innovation, and he does so in a way that should be of keen interest to executives, intrapreneurs, and aspiring intrapreneurs across industries. Not only does Desouza explore new territory, he does so in a highly readable, applied manner drawing from both research and practice. Intrapreneurship will enable employees and managers to overcome typical, and costly, roadblocks faced when transforming ideas into commercially viable products and services.‘ Robert Wolcott, Co-Founder and Executive Director, Kellogg Innovation Network, Northwestern University

‘The evidence suggests most companies actually do a terrific job of killing off the entrepreneurial endeavours of their would-be innovators, through their standardized procedures and risk-averse mentalities. Kevin C. Desouza’s book, Intrapreneurship, provides the solution. He gives guidance to the people with bright ideas, to help them build support and get their ideas taken seriously, and he offers advice on how to manage and organize a company to give these would-be intrapreneurs as much support as possible. Drawing from his own practical experience as well as decades of academic research, Desouza’s book is a must-read in companies that care about making innovation everyone’s job.‘ Julian Birkinshaw, Professor, London Business School; Co-Founder, Management Innovation Lab (MLab); Fellow, Advanced Institute of Management Research (UK); and author of Reinventing Management

‘You cannot stay competitive and lead your industry unless you mine the potential within your own organization. Kevin C. Desouza makes the case for identifying and empowering talent to steward innovation from within. Intrapreneurship will help you tap your company’s greatest potential.‘  Scott Belsky, CEO of Behance, National Bestselling Author of Making Ideas Happen

To order your copy, please visit amazon.com or B&N.com.
To learn more about the book, please visit the University of Toronto Press site.

Faculty Fellow Showcase: Margaret Cowell

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Professor Margaret Cowell, assistant professor in the Urban Affairs and Planning program in the School of Public and International Affairs and Faculty Fellow to the Metropolitan Institute, shared some of her background and research highlights recently.

 Q: Please tell us a bit about your academic background.

I attended Brown University in Providence, RI, with the intention of becoming a medical doctor, however an undergraduate urban studies course sparked my curiosity and I quickly became obsessed with the subject and took every city-based course I could. I had the opportunity to study abroad in Cork, Ireland, a post-industrial city that felt much like the towns I’d grown up near in upstate New York, and a little like Buffalo or Cleveland. During my time abroad, Cork was seeing some growth with the ‘Celtic Tiger’ and my time there showed me another face of urban development in distressed areas.  I then pursued a Masters degree in planning at the University of Buffalo – another excellent location for studying urban development in shrinking cities. Several years working and conducting research at the Federal Reserve Bank cemented my love for research. Driven by a desire to develop my own research agenda, I went back to school to pursue a PhD at Cornell University, working with Rolf Pendall and Susan Christopherson on transitional economies and regional resilience.

Q: What are your main research projects at the present time?

Currently, I’m working on a book manuscript to help us better understand how larger cities of the Midwest responded to deindustrialization in the 1970s and 1980s. The research is built on interviews I conducted with development officials, civic leaders, public officials, and private sector representatives in Buffalo, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Columbus, Detroit, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, and Pittsburgh to get a sense on the decision-making process and the economic development planning response crafted in each of these places. Continue reading →

MI Partnership with German Marshall Fund Awarded $2.5 million grant from HUD

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The US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has announced its selection of the German Marshall Fund (GMF) partnership as the recipient of the $2.5 million award to manage the Strong Cities, Strong Communities (SC2) fellowship program for HUD. The partnership is comprised of the German Marshall Fund, Cleveland State University, and the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech. Associate Director Joseph Schilling will serve as the principle investigator on this three-year project.

The fellowship program is the capacity building element of the White House-led SC2 initiative. SC2 is a pilot program focused on retooling and rebuilding the capacity of cities facing long-term economic challenges often known as cities in transition or legacy cities. Up to 30 fellows will be assigned to the six SC2 cities (Chester, PA; Detroit, MI; New Orleans, LA; Fresno, CA; Memphis, TN; and Cleveland, OH.)

To fund the fellowship program, the Rockefeller Foundation donated $2.5 million to HUD to manage and implement the fellowship program.The GMF partnership was the winning proposal and will be responsible for implementing and administering the fellowship program.

“The Strong Cities Strong Communities Initiative represents a new and innovative way for the federal government to work with local governments, the private sector, and institutions of higher learning to support local economic growth and encourage community development,” said Melody Barnes, White House Domestic Policy Council Director. “The Strong Cities Strong Communities fellowship program will give these cities a class of highly-skilled fellows who are committed to public service, and who will become our next generation of leaders.”

“The Rockefeller Foundation is thrilled to support the Strong Cities Strong Communities Initiative, as part of our commitment to help vulnerable populations build resilience,” said Rockefeller Foundation President Judith Rodin. “The selected fellows will bring new innovation to cities like New Orleans and Detroit in these rapidly changing times, and lend increased energy to communities that are already working to find ways to be resilient during a difficult economic period.”

The fellowship program will be a competitive program that provides funding for early to mid-career professionals to work for 24 months in the six pilot cities to supplement existing local capacity. Virginia Tech’s Metropolitan Institute and CSU’s Center for Community Planning and Development will take the lead on mentoring the fellows on an ongoing basis and evaluating the impacts from the fellows. MI’s Associate Director, Joseph Schilling, and CPD’s Director Kathryn Hexter will serve as the Fellowship’s “Mentor Team” by coaching the teams of fellows and coordinating fellowship activities with sponsor organizations in the six pilot cities.

In addition to building the capacity of local governments, SC2 aims to encourage partnerships among local community organizations, anchor institutions, businesses, foundations and government agencies, to help leverage federal investments.

Link to Cleveland State University Press Release
Link to German Marshall Fund Press Release