In 2010, a coalition of nearly 40 CEOs and institutional leaders, all from small cities and rural areas in West Michigan, joined forces around a regional talent-development effort called Talent2025. In working together, they hoped to be able to do something that none of them could do individually: help West Michigan become a top-20 region for employment.
How Business Coalitions Can Have a Strong Local Impact
Best practices based on an analysis of more than 40 regional initiatives.
April 29, 2022
PIER/Getty Images; Unsplash
Summary.
All over the country, place-based business coalitions are on the rise. In these coalitions, CEOs of local businesses are teaming up with community leaders to bring about change that is good for everybody in the region — workers, customers, suppliers, local citizens, and businesses themselves. The authors recently studied more than 40 such regional coalitions, and in this article they identify three important practices that explain their success.