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Strong Native Firms Key to Recruiting New Businesses
We’ve all heard the stories about Silicon Valley in California and Research Triangle in North Carolina. What makes these places so economically unique? The companies that locate in so-called clusters do so for a very simple reason—to be close to one another.
Industry clusters form because certain regions develop and attract a perfect combination of talent, technology and tools. Companies, even fierce competitors, locate close to one another to share a highly trained workforce, collaborate on business opportunities, take advantage of cutting edge research and generally learn from one another.
The Greater Lansing region was once one of the strongest manufacturing industry clusters in the world. However, our community’s position as a leader in manufacturing has slipped because regions such as Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina and Austin, Texas, have developed and integrated new business and technology innovations faster and more effectively. Those regions have also trained their workforces with the latest technology and skills. The Greater Lansing region must make the move “up the value chain” in manufacturing.
General Motors has made two very significant investments that continue to position our community as a global leader in advanced manufacturing. To be sure, there has been some pain caused by this move, but over the long term it will make the Greater Lansing region economically stronger. Our region is home to several strong performing manufacturers such as Demmer Corporation, Spartan Motors, Neogen, Emergent BioSolutions and many strong, smaller manufacturers in fast-growing technology sectors such as medical devices, superconducting and biomaterials.
Recently, Leap, Inc., and Capital Area Michigan Works released a study showing that the Greater Lansing region is home to a large and growing cluster of insurance and finance companies. Our region’s insurance and financial services employment outpaces our competitor regions, illustrating that our community has a competitive advantage in this industry. Over time, Greater Lansing has built the core competencies required by this industry. The exceptional performance of economic base, regional firms—Capitol Bancorp, MSU Federal Credit Union, Accident Fund, Auto-Owners Insurance, Jackson National Life, FinCor Holdings, Michigan Millers, Delta Dental, Farm Bureau, among others—shows that Greater Lansing has the talent, technology and tools to be a leader in the insurance and financial sectors.
The competitive advantages achieved by the community over time will now be leveraged to attract similar businesses to our community.
These sectors—manufacturing, insurance and finance—are excellent examples of a community product that can be sold on a global level to attract new firms to the Greater Lansing region.