Ball State Study on NE IN Economic Climate

Ball State Study on NE IN Economic Climate

By Corinne Rose - 21Alive

December 2, 2014 Updated Dec 2, 2014 at 6:02 PM EST

FORT WAYNE, Ind. (21Alive) -- A new study offers detailed insights into how northeast Indiana can capitalize on what it's doing right in attracting good jobs as well as what it can do better.

A study out of Ball State says the key to good economic development for the 10-county region of northeast Indiana is a better educated workforce.

That's something the Northeast Indiana Regional Partnership already knew and designed programs to address.

"We aligned Vision 2020 and the Big Goal around education and talent development. And this report makes it clear that we need to continue down that path," says the Regional Partnership’s John Sampson.

That includes identifying the key constraints to the region's economy and focusing efforts on breaking through them.

The Ball State study highlights four key areas for Indiana and its northeast region to develop: advanced manufacturing, biosciences, emerging media, and what was a lightbulb moment for Sampson -- informational technology.

"This report finally puts a spotlight on how that runs kind of horizontally through all of our clusters that we well understood before. So information technology, it's coming out of this report as important to all these sectors," Sampson says.

He says in today's global economy, the old saying is true -- the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

"We have a great city in the city of Fort Wayne, but we're a better region when we stand together around these key priorities," Sampson says.

He says the study provides massive amounts of data to digest, and he hopes to learn more as the Partnership combs through it.

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