Market-Based Development
The Chicago Region’s “Green” Economic Opportunities (January 2012): This report, written jointly by RW Ventures and Innovation Network for Communities, explores opportunities for Chicago area firms arising from the increasing market demand for energy and resource efficient products and services. The first part of the report describes the project’s cluster approach, outlining the theory behind cluster-driven economic growth and identifying the particular criteria used to select promising clusters for the project. Using these criteria, the report narrows from many green sectors of opportunity to the one—energy efficient lighting—ultimately chosen to illustrate green cluster development. The second part of the report digs deeper into the energy efficient (EE) lighting sector, providing an overview of the industry and its current trends and dynamics. The report ends with recommendations for development of Chicago’s EE Lighting sector as well as strategies for regional green economic development more broadly.
The Energy of the Future for the Economy of the Present: Business Opportunities in the Green Economy (September 2010): This presentation (available in both English and Italian) for a regional business conference in Rovereto, Italy describes the growing market for “green” products, identifies business opportunities and sustainability strategies and offers suggestions for regional green strategy development.
Market Development for Building Energy Efficiency Retrofits (December 2008): This concept paper, reporting on a project collaboratively developed by RW Ventures and O-H Community Partners, offers recommendations for catalyzing the emergence of a large-scale market in building energy efficiency retrofits in the Chicago area. Reflecting input from a diverse group of national experts and market stakeholders, the paper offers a preliminary look at potential market development strategies, including new information and other products and services to reduce transaction costs and enable the market to value the retrofits; institutional models and strategies for implementation; and complementary activities from the civic community and government.
Innovation Remarks, Urban Markets Initiative (October 2007): This speech was delivered by Robert Weissbourd as part of a plenary session on Innovation at the 2007 UMI Forum. The speech addresses the barriers and opportunities for innovation in the economic development field.
Into the Economic Mainstream (Fall 2006): This paper and related presentation, prepared for Opportunity Finance Network and CFED, introduce a new framework for bipartisan economic development policies, centered on the idea of “inclusionary growth".
Market-Based Community Economic Development (Fall 2006): This presentation outlines the theoretical framework for market-based community economic development, including a discussion of how market-based strategies work and when they are most effective. The presentation also provides examples of how the framework can be applied to development practice in the areas of retail and financial services.
UMI Discussion Papers (Spring 2005): These two complementary papers written for the Brookings Institution’s Urban Markets Initiative examine the role of information resources in spurring markets and creating investment strategies to boost urban neighborhoods. The papers offer a framework for market-based community economic development, presenting business-planning tools for inner city communities.
Valuing Neighborhoods, Driving Change (December 2002): In planning its activities for the next decade, Living Cities commissioned RW Ventures and the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program to undertake the design phase for a ten-year project that would invest in information to drive inner-city market investment, asset-building, and policy reform. The work presented in this report resulted in the creation of the Urban Markets Initiative.
“Banking on Technology: Expanding Financial Markets and Economic Opportunity (June 2002): This paper, co-sponsored by the Brookings Institution and the Financial Services Roundtable, examines recent technological advancements and other profound changes in the financial services industry and identifies how these changes create a prime opportunity for the industry to profitably reach out to lower-income consumers. A range of information, access, policy, and other issues can be addressed to improve market functioning, and help bring lower-income consumers into the economic mainstream. Financial services providers are recognizing the benefits and viability of reaching out to lower-income consumers and are creating new partnerships and new products to respond to their needs. The paper closes with recommendations on how best to address the barriers, accelerate the emerging market response and bring it to scale. One of these recommendations led to the business planning and creation of the Center for Financial Services Innovation at Shorebank.”
Download DocumentsThe Market Potential of Inner City Neighborhoods: Filling the Information Gap (March 1999): This paper examines how current information, primarily dependent on federal data sources, fails to accurately convey the opportunity in inner city economies. It then suggests how building business-based data and models can address these information imperfections, and help bring new investment to America’s most distressed communities. The paper closes by suggesting ways that private sector leaders can work with the federal government and community organizations to improve data and market expertise and profitably invest in urban neighborhoods. The work reflected in this paper led to the creation of MetroEdge.
Download Documents
© 2005 RW Ventures, LLC
