"When I am weak, then I am strong." - II Corinthians 12:10"A prophet is not without honor, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house." - Mark 6:4 The is the last in my series on reconnecting Chicago with its natural city-region in the greater Midwest. But it really has nothing to do specifically with Chicago, or even the Midwest. It deals, rather, with innovation generally. I discussed how companies were outsourcing offshore, with a big driver being labor arbitrage. But as with all trends, labor arbitrage … [Read more...]
Archives for February 2009
Chicago: Reconnecting the Hinterland 2A – Onshore Outsourcing
This the third installment of my four part series about ideas to create competitive advantage through reconnecting Chicago with its traditional greater Midwestern city-region. (Essential background reading is in Chicago: A Declaration of Independence. Part 1a is on Metropolitan Connections. Part 1b is on High Speed Rail). To refresh, in my kickoff of the year of celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Burnham Plan in Chicago, I argued that while Chicago was performing well in a globalized world, it was only riding the wave of globalization … [Read more...]
Chicago: Reconnecting the Hinterland, Part 1B – High Speed Rail
The first installment in my series on ideas for reconnecting Chicago with its natural expanded region in the Midwest focused on what could be enabled by linking Milwaukee and Indianapolis to Chicago via high speed rail. This makes it a good time to talk about Midwest high speed rail generally. There's been a lot of talk in recent years about the idea of creating a Midwest high speed rail network. The federal government has already designated a system of Midwest rail corridors. There's a lobbying organization pushing it called the Midwest … [Read more...]
Chicago: Reconnecting the Hinterland, Part 1A – Metropolitan Linkages
In my kickoff of the year of celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Burnham Plan in Chicago, I argued that while Chicago was performing well in a globalized world, it was only riding the wave of globalization and wasn't defining its own uniquely successful future, one where it first and most fully grasped the implications of our new world. I also promised ideas on where to look to do that, starting with re-embracing its own unique culture and identity, resisting homogenization. Today I start a four part mini-series looking at another … [Read more...]