The Development Landscape

{1} Competencies

>>> By competencies, Sandy Layman means a skilled workforce. It’s an education and training issue, she says, having to do with identifying future opportunities and preparing the talent you’ll need to be world-class competitors.

“With the aging demographic, the competition for talent will be higher than it has been historically,” she remarks. “And I think this is going to be an especially challenging issue for rural communities, because by and large in the last several years, the rural areas have been losing population to the metro areas.”

As a state agency in charge of economic development, Iron Range Resources has responded by partnering with the president of the Northeastern Higher Education District to create a regional workforce coordinator position. Roy Smith, the person in that position, is responsible for coordinating the efforts of economic developers and educators so that education offerings are in lockstep with the needs of business and industry in the region.

“One of the tactics that Roy has been using is to begin to identify skill sets that are required across industry clusters,” Layman says. “For example, if you have a skill set within the mining industry, many of those skills will translate into the forest products industry. And they might also translate into other higher-value manufacturing.”

>>> Iron Range Resources does have some flexible capital; it has invested more than $50 million in business in the last four years. But Layman says overall, the critical mass of venture capital isn’t available in rural Minnesota.

“It’s just essential that capital be available at the very early stages for research and development,” she says. “But there also needs to be capital to take it the next step to commercialization.”

Lack of funding is one problem that limits growth, but Layman is optimistic. “Thomas Edison said that problems are just opportunities in work clothes,” she says. “Our agency has seen [lack of traditional funding] as an opportunity. We’ve put some risk capital out there in some big projects like Excelsior Energy, which is going to be commercializing new, clean coal technology. And Mesabi Nugget [see “Extending the Range” in the December 2006 issue of Twin Cities Business] right now is seeking financing, and we are very hopeful that we can find the capital it needs.”

>>> Layman says none of this is much good without the courage to seize opportunities. “In northeastern Minnesota, we’re so dependent on industries such as papermaking and mining that are tied to natural resources, that seem to have business cycles,” she says. “We need to boldly seize opportunities—to be willing to invest capital in unproven ideas, because there’s new technology that could be deployed here in Minnesota.”

This sort of courage manifests itself as a sort of collective consumer confidence, she says. In   its simplest form, it means speaking positively to each other and to people outside the state about the business opportunities available to Minnesotans.