Business Growth
WHAT IT IS
We must use our strengths as a region to retain, attract and create businesses and jobs.
WHY IT MATTERS
A diverse, vibrant business community is the foundation for a healthy region. It creates jobs, which attract talented people, and brings economic opportunity to everyone who lives here.
Strong businesses also increase our tax base and contribute to our community through their products and services and their philanthropy, and in many other ways.
Partner Sites:
Cincinnati USA Partnership, World class health center
WHERE WE ARE
Southwest Ohio has a strong business community.
We reap the benefits of being a Top 10 market for Fortune 500 companies. Nine have established headquarters here. Those large companies nurture entrepreneurs, vendors and spin-off businesses.
The region is home to operations for more than 360 other Fortune 500 companies as well.
And it has an unusually high concentration of companies in key industries from aerospace to financial services and information technology.
The more than 300 colleges and universities located within 200 miles of Greater Cincinnati also contribute to the strong business community. Together they have nearly 1 million students and send more than 100,000 young professionals into the workforce each year.
However, one challenge is that despite the strong companies here, our job growth is not keeping pace with comparable cities, according to research from the Cincinnati USA partnership economic Advisory Committee. The Indianapolis region saw nearly 6 percent growth in employment from 2002-2006, for instance, and Columbus saw just over 5 percent growth, while the Cincinnati region barely passed 4 percent.
So we should not take for granted our strong business community. We cannot afford to be complacent in a global economy where metro areas are fighting to attract businesses.
WHERE WE'RE GOING
We must work harder to grow jobs. The best way to do that is to attract new headquarters and business operations, create new businesses and help existing businesses expand. And the best way to do that is to figure out what we're already doing well and to build on those successes.
Agenda 360 defined three strategies for creating a businessgrowth culture.
Leverage new and existing economic clusters
Economic clusters are areas of industry concentration or strength. All communities have such areas of strength. The very successful ones connect those strengths purposefully, so they can identify opportunities to grow, attract related businesses and develop new businesses.
Specifically, Agenda 360 proposes that we:
- Connect related businesses with one another so they can look at ways to collaborate and grow their businesses.
- Engage the leaders in the cluster industries to help recruit companies to move here, whether they be competitors, vendors or suppliers.
- Look for opportunities to spin-off startup businesses from larger companies.
Create a world-class health center
Every time you bring a health-care-related laboratory to a community, you bring 80 to 100 new jobs. And that's just a start. A strong health care system has a wide impact in almost every area of a community. It also builds a population of healthy, active citizens with a good quality of life.
The 31 hospitals and affiliated facilities in the Tristate contributed nearly $14 billion to the region's economy in 2007. The numbers, calculated by the University of Cincinnati economics Center for education and Research, are an 85 percent increase over 2002 numbers.
These institutions employed 51,802 people as of June 2007 and, by driving employment in other industries, created a total job count of 127,229 here.
We want to make the health-care industry even more powerful by creating a nationally and globally recognized center for health care in our region. We can do this by building on the expertise at the University of Cincinnati and Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center in obesity and diabetes as well as the delivery of cancer prevention, research and treatment programs.
Protect air service
The Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport (CVG) has been a tremendous economic development engine for our region for more than two decades, with an annual economic impact estimated in 2005 at $4.5 billion.
Companies such as Toyota North American Manufacturing, Fidelity, Ashland Inc. and more than 300 internationally based businesses attribute their locating here in part to the service provided through CVG. Those direct flights around the world are key for them in doing business.
As the airline industry has suffered in recent years with the drop in air travel after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 as well as the unprecedented spike in fuel prices and overall industry consolidation the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky airport has reduced service.
But CVG is still a world-class airport, with capacity to expand the number of airlines serving our region. Delta Air Lines, which runs one of its largest U.S. hubs out of Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky airport, provides 91 percent of the service at CVG.
We need to work diligently to preserve the existing direct domestic and international routes that are so important to businesses here and to attracting new businesses in the future.
At the same time, airport leaders must work with business, civic and government leaders to pursue service from other airlines, which might be better able to meet the need for lower-fare business and leisure travel here.
GETTING STARTED
The following are initiatives Agenda 360 has identified as good ways to make progress on the above strategies for business growth. They are just a start; new programs and initiatives will be found, created and evolve with the changing needs of our community.
Consumer cluster
Our goal is to be recognized as one of the Top 5 consumer marketing regions in the world.
As the headquarters town of Procter & Gamble, Kroger, Macy's and a host of marketing, branding, design and advertising services companies, Cincinnati is already a consumer marketing hub.
The work of Agenda 360 suggests that we take our expertise and leverage it in a more cohesive way. This will help us continue to attract and create new businesses and talented workers in that area and build our international reputation as a leading region in consumer marketing.
Diabetes/obesity and cancer programs
The region can emerge as the national leader in the prevention and treatment of obesity and diabetes by leveraging regional scientific and clinical strengths to create a community-wide movement that makes its citizens healthier.
The University of Cincinnati and Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center have a strong partnership already. They maintain approximately $90 million in research funding in the areas of obesity and diabetes and offer extensive specialty clinical services in these areas, as well as patient education.
The region also can create a communitywide cancer initiative that positions it to obtain a National Cancer Institute Comprehensive Cancer Center designation, making us a destination for patients seeking state-of-the-art prevention, diagnosis and treatment programs.
The Cincinnati Cancer Consortium is emerging as the ideal entity to pursue NCI-designation and the related funding. This initiative draws additional federal dollars, grows clinical and research jobs in academia and industry, and increases relationships with key governmental agencies based here.