2012 Vinodrai et al EDCO Taking Regional Action - Faculty of ...

Executive Summary
Clean technologies
• The Waterloo region has a long history of civicbased
environmental activism and leadership, which
coupled with the region’s high-tech and advanced
manufacturing identity, combine to facilitate the
emergence and growth of the clean tech sector.
• The historic presence of a large manufacturing
sector in the region provides a base of skills,
technologies, supply chains and other assets that the
clean tech sector draws upon. This is well-recognized
amongst the economic development community
and has led to efforts such as the Solar Innovation
Networking Group (SING), which has helped to
facilitate the transition of manufacturing firms into
new areas, such as the solar energy sector.
Creative and cultural industries
• The Waterloo region’s focus on high technology
both shapes and limits the development of the
creative and cultural industries.
• The region’s strengths in technology are well
recognized in the community and are viewed as
an opportunity for specialized content creation,
particularly related to digital media.
• However, the economic development view of
the creative and cultural industries focuses on
technology-oriented, rather than arts-based
activities, leading to a narrow view of creative and
cultural activity that excludes some parts of the
arts community.
3.Vision and leadership:
Our findings point to the necessity of strong
regional leadership, capable of integrating and
coordinating diverse interests. While the Waterloo
region has a regional economic development
agency, Canada’s Technology Triangle, (CTT), its
mandate (focused on investment attraction) limits
its ability to take on a broader leadership role. Other
economic development efforts are often uneven and
fragmented; rural communities—in particular—are
often less connected to their urban and regional
counterparts. However, important sector-based,
regionally oriented civic and industry organizations
do exist, but they are not always well connected to
the region’s economic development network. As a
result, valuable community vision and leadership
assets are underutilized by the region and the
economic development community. This leads to
missed opportunities to access critical knowledge and
information, develop leadership assets and learn from
these regional organizations.
Local food systems
• Economic development approaches to
developing Waterloo region’s local food system
are fragmented and lack regional coordination. As
a result, current efforts support pre-existing local
networks, preventing the development of a regional
understanding of local food system issues.
• Two organizations have been established:
Foodlink Waterloo Region and the Waterloo
Region Food System Roundtable, each focused
on horizontal networking with separate mandates.
Despite possessing distinct regional mandates,
tensions have developed as a result of perceived
competition for funding and overlap in mandates.
• These two organizations were rarely identified in
our network analysis or interviews with economic
developers. This suggests that these organizations
are not adequately recognized within, or integrated
into, the region’s economic development network.
This represents a missed opportunity for leveraging
community and sectoral leadership assets,
including the organizations’ robust knowledge of
the challenges and opportunities confronting the
region’s local food system.
Understanding networks in the local food, green energy and creative sectors in Waterloo region 7