Imagine being an entrepreneur and having at your fingertips resources for everything from pre-seed funding to regional incubators. Questions about how to turn an idea into a business, how to request funding and how to place your innovative idea in the proper hands could be answered by simply clicking a button or linking to a respected adviser.

That's the idea behind the JumpStart Entrepreneurial Network's newly launched website, which aims to make access to the appropriate connections simpler and more effective for entrepreneurs within a 21-county radius.

"By having this website serve as a single entry point to a continuum of resources, we're making access to those resources quicker and easier," says John Dearborn, president of JumpStart Inc. Interested parties fill out a form detailing their idea or startup business, and are then put in touch with the appropriate local resources.

Several area entrepreneurial support organizations, all of which have received funding from Ohio's Third Frontier, comprise the JumpStart Entrepreneurial Network:  GLIDE, MAGNET, Braintree Business Development Center, Youngstown Business Incubator, Akron Global Business Accelerator, BioEnterprise, Glengary, LLC, North Coast Angel Fund, North Coast Opportunities Technology Fund of Cuyahoga County, Innovation Fund founded by Lorain County Community College Foundation, Ohio Aerospace Institute, NorTech, IdeaCrossing and JumpStart. The region's higher-education institutions are also members.

According to Ray Leach, CEO of JumpStart, this influential group has together received $69 million in federal and state grants, reached annualized revenues of $100 million and created and supported 850 direct jobs at an average salary of $67,200.


SOURCE: Jumpstart, Inc.
WRITER: Diane DiPiero

Partners Investing in Nursing's Future (PIN) is a nationwide initiative to ensure nurses receive the training and skills necessary to meet current and future trends in healthcare. The program provides support to local and regional philanthropies to develop strategies for creating and sustaining a viable nursing workforce.

The Cleveland Foundation has been chosen as one of nine foundations across the country to receive funding from PIN. The two-year, $200,000 grant to the Cleveland Foundation will be used specifically to address Ohio's nursing needs by expanding the number of nurse educators in the state. Local funding totaling $210,000 will match the grant.

The Cleveland Foundation will be working in collaboration with the Mt. Sinai Health Care Foundation and the nursing schools at Cleveland State University, Kent State University, the University of Akron and Ursuline College to address specific nursing-related concerns in Northeast Ohio.

In addition to the Cleveland Foundation, PIN grants were awarded to foundations in California, Colorado, Maine, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Dakota and Texas. These PIN partners will focus on key areas of concern in building a nursing workforce: capacity, diversity, education, recruitment and retention.


SOURCE: Cleveland Foundation
WRITER: Diane DiPiero

Thomas Paine would be proud. At a time when it seems like every new idea is first floated online, Plain Dealer architecture critic Steven Litt has chosen good old-fashioned paper as the primary vehicle for his impassioned paean to beautiful surroundings, Designing a Better Cleveland.

"To the extent that Cleveland fails to make the most of public and private investments in buildings, highways, bridges, streets, parks and waterfronts, it will waste opportunities, fail to compete effectively with its peers and damage its economy," Litt writes in the introduction. "Everyone, in other words, has a stake in good design."

Litt calls the slim, gorgeously designed booklet "a mini-primer on the ways in which citizens, developers, planners and designers can raise standards of civic design in Cleveland." But it's clearly also meant to inspire.

"Economists may disagree over whether excellent architecture and urban amenities such as streetscapes, bike trails and waterfront parks are a cause or consequence of economic vitality," he writes. "Regardless, it never makes sense to spend a dollar on mediocrity when the same dollar can buy excellence. The reality is that great design demands greater effort -- on the part of clients, designers, government agencies and citizens. Cleveland continues to be plagued by a chronic sense of low self-esteem and by the notion that trying to improve the city through better design isn't worth the effort.

"THIS VOLUME REJECTS THAT VIEW."

The book grew out of Spectrum: the Lockwood Thompson Dialogues at the Cleveland Public Library, and was facilitated by Cleveland Public Art.

Since the book's inroduction in the PD, Cleveland Public Art has received nearly 200 calls requesting copies, according to executive director Gregory Peckham. "That seems like a good benchmark when it comes to the interest of the public about the subject of civic design," Peckham notes.

Designing a Better Cleveland is also available online as a PDF.



Source: Plain Dealer
Writer: Frank W. Lewis

Studying "the ways businesses incorporate sustainable practices into product design and manufacturing, supply-chain relationships, marketing, customer relationships and operational efficiencies" is how Baldwin-Wallace professor David Krueger defines the new MBA in Sustainability program at Baldwin-Wallace (B-W).

The two-year sustainability program is the first of its kind in Ohio. B-W was also the first higher-education institution in the state to offer an undergraduate major in sustainability, which began in 2008.

Krueger, professor of business and director of the Institute for Sustainable Business Practice, says that the MBA in Sustainability program is designed so that students learn by doing and by observing how sustainable practices are applied in the workplace.

For its part, B-W has been putting sustainable practices to work on campus for the past few years. These have included installing geothermal heating and cooling systems in buildings, instituting an industrial-scale waste composting program and campus-wide recycling and constructing a wind turbine.

B-W's Institute for Sustainable Business Practice, which serves as a resource to businesses, recently received $100,000 from the Cleveland Foundation for its Sustainability Plan Clinic.


SOURCE: Baldwin-Wallace
WRITER: Diane DiPiero

The Civic Commons is a modern-day marriage of online technology, citizen journalism, and civic collaboration. The mission? To inform, engage and lead local residents to action on any number of weighty topics. Our guides: Dan Moulthrop and Noelle Celeste.

Someday the Medical Mart may make Cleveland an essential destination for healthcare professions. But the city has already achieved such status among those who study blight, which is why Cleveland is hosting the third national Reclaiming Vacant Properties Conference, which continues through Friday at the Renaissance Cleveland Hotel on Public Square.

"This is by far the biggest," says Jennifer Leonard of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Community Progress, which organized the conference with Cleveland's own Neighborhood Progress, Inc. "Today, there are more places that are being challenged by vacant properties."

Cleveland, of course, would be at or near the top of any such list. But that's not the only reason CCP selected the city for this gathering, which occurs every 18 months. Cleveland also boasts an impressive array of dedicated advocates and innovative approaches to the problem, such as the Cuyahoga Land Bank and Judge Raymond Pianka's Housing Court.

Various parts of the city will serve as backdrops for discussions. "Mobile Workshops" will take participants to Euclid Avenue, as an example of using transit to spur development; a vineyard in Hough and other sites that have been reclaimed for farming or greenspace; Slavic Village, where the foreclosure crisis is combated with a "resident-driven approach to finding a new identity," and the hip and booming Detroit Shoreway community.

"It's actually kind of hard," notes Leonard, "to make sure the conference isn't too focused on Cleveland."

The conference is sold out, but more information is available at the web site.



Source: Center for Community Progress
Writer: Frank W. Lewis

With just six miles remaining, and following a route that was created some 177 years ago, the Ohio & Erie Canal Towpath Trail finally is nearing completion. Terminating at the Flats' new Canal Basin Park, the Towpath Trail will connect cyclists and pedestrians to Cleveland's historic neighborhoods. And when it comes to attracting the highly mobile talent class, access to bike paths is no longer an amenity -- it's a necessity