The Cleveland Design Business Accelerator

In 2006, Ned Hill, Dean of the CSU Levin College of Urban Affairs and Dan Cuffaro, Cleveland Institute of Art Professor of Industrial Design, proposed the creation and development of a "District of Design" in Cleveland, Ohio. The intention of this project was to aggregate and concentrate the design organizations, businesses, institutions, and practitioners in the region into a cohesive area that would result in a critical mass of resources available to both local and outside the region businesses, and institutions. Following the introduction of this proposal, I suggested an accompanying strategy to attract new talent, businesses, and manufacturers to the region to populate this newly formed "District" to benefit from its influence. Unfortunately, the Great Recession hit by 2009 and the plan for this proposal was unable to become the reality and opportunity it could have been.

Nearly fifteen years later, the time is right to resurrect this vision for our region. The delivery of this opportunity would come through the development of the "Design Business Accelerator" transforming Cleveland to the "Milan of the Midwest.".  Its purpose would be to promote a creative product development environment where local organizations will increase capacity to produce and manufacture their designs, attract, and retain talent, and become better global competitors.

Imagine, Cleveland tapping its cultural, academic, not-for-profit institutions, design culture, and creative manufacturers to engage internationally with the great design centers such as: Milan, Stockholm, Paris, Seoul, Shenzhen, Tokyo, Chicago, San Francisco, or Detroit. To be included with these notable cities, we need to attract international creative organizations in product, automotive, graphic, industrial, biotech, interior, architectural, furnishings, advertising, materials, theatre, and fashion design to Cleveland’s “District of Design”. This proposal initiates the process to showcase how Cleveland can become one of those places.

The work to produce the opportunity the Accelerator suggests will require significant investment to attract these businesses to Cleveland. The groundwork could be accomplished through a modest investment of $10,000. This funding would be used to develop the process, targeted literature, and accomplish these initial steps:

1. Inventory the businesses, talent pool, institutions, and resources already in the region.
2. Identify and target the organizations to attract, determine their challenges, and inducements to consider how Cleveland would enhance their success.
3. “Pro-emanate”, a word describing how our skills, abilities, knowledge, and experience can serve a business or organization in addressing its challenges and issues.
4. Articulate the alignment between our community’s value proposition, assets, resources, and skills with their needs, challenges. and objectives. And
5. Develop a program to gain the attention of the target audience and identify how a Cleveland location contributes to their performance.  

There is more to be done through a series of next steps to complete the process.

This first step project provides the foundation to deliver a major economic, social, and cultural impact for our region. In becoming the Milan of the Midwest, Cleveland can be recognized as a source for design solutions. The benefit is bringing to our community high-paying jobs, creative people, and new manufacturing. Therefore, the Design Business Accelerator is a worthy endeavor for the future of Cleveland.