Webinar: 5 Simple Rules for Complex Collaboration in EconDev

Collaboration is a process that drives innovation. Getting key players from different organizations and backgrounds to work smoothly together for a common goal in economic development can be challenging, yet it's key to economic prosperity in today's global economy.

Chances are, most economic developers can't explain collaboration, even if they do it well. It's no surprise. Until recently, we did not understand the process. Some people intuitively got it but too many never benefit from the synergies and successes that can be wrought by small but critical shifts in practice. A new discipline known as Strategic Doing captures the simple rules of complex collaboration. 

On Oct. 14th we featured a webinar titled "5 Simple Rules for Complex Collaboration in Economic Development." This 30-minute session looked at how economic developers can go about facilitating collaboration with the many different groups, organizations and people in their communities. We were proud to feature Ed Morrison as our guest presenter for this webinar. Ed is the director of the Agile Strategy Lab at the University of North Alabama and the co-author of Strategic Doing: Ten Skills for Agile Leadership.

Ed explains that the way economic developers and their stakeholders plan and communicate strategy is key to its success: "To transform an economy, our conversations -- how we design and manage them -- become critical. It's how we generate and distribute knowledge, create collaborations, accelerate innovation, and create ecosystems. This insight applies to all economies: metro and rural, large and small."

His focus in this webinar will be on the practical ways economic developers can go about structuring those networks. "In today's economy, it's all about knowledge and networks. That's why we're hearing so much about clusters and ecosystems. But how do EDPros build these networks? That's what we explore in this webinar. Not why networks are important, but how you develop them."

• Why collaboration depends on designing and guiding our conversations
• How to create and defend safe spaces for complex conversations
• Why do these four questions provide a map to collaboration
• How to build trust with a culture of learning by doing
• What you can do to master these skills
• The presentation will be followed by a Q&A