With 368 manufacturing facilities working full tilt and unemployment figures well below the national average, Wright County, MN is obviously doing something right when it comes to workforce development. We spoke with Duane Northagen, Director of Wright County Economic Development Partnership; Brian Koslofsky, Executive Director of Wright County’s Cooperative School District 966; and Shaun Karson, Principal, Wright Technical Center, to learn what’s afoot in this thriving county.

Since 2003, Minnesota’s Scott County Association for Leadership and Efficiency (SCALE) has proved that amazing things happen when people leave their silos and work together for the common economic good. Proof? How about a 60.5 percent growth in population (U.S. Census Bureau) over 16 years and a 26.7 percent growth rate in new jobs (Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development – LAUS).

Pine County is conveniently situated halfway between Minnesota’s Twin Cities and Duluth on Interstate 35, giving it access to two metropolitan areas. The county has an abundance of outdoor recreational opportunities with lakes and rivers for water activities. The two state parks and five state forests in Pine County offer vast space for hiking, biking, rock climbing, canoeing, ATV riding, cross-country skiing, and camping.

For almost 15 years, the Kandiyohi County and City of Willmar Economic Development Commission (EDC) has been working hard to serve as a catalyst for economic growth in its region. In 2017, Business in Focus took a closer look at this dynamic organization and all of the great initiatives the EDC was working on in partnership with other sectors to make the City and County a vibrant and attractive place to live and do business.

Wharton, Texas, a small city in Wharton County, is thriving again following the devastation of Hurricane Harvey. This recovery is a testament to the resilience of residents and retailers alike, determined not to let a natural disaster diminish their community spirit.

Rosenberg, Texas is poised to become a major transportation and logistics hub, connecting Port Freeport to transit routes across America. Located just 30 miles southwest of Houston, Rosenberg offers all the amenities of a major metropolitan area with plenty of room to grow.

Rockwall County is the smallest Texas county by geographic size, but it’s also one of the most affluent. Its county seat is the City of Rockwall, which is a small but rapidly growing Dallas-area suburb of approximately 45,000 residents.

Lockhart is a city of more than 13,000 people in the rural county of Caldwell in central Texas. The city is in the very middle of the rapidly growing corridor connecting Austin and San Antonio and barely thirty minutes from each of these two metropolitan centers. The Lockhart Economic Development Corporation (EDC) is working to realize some of the logistical advantages of its fortuitous location.

Combine an entrepreneurial ethos, a skilled workforce with a bent toward lifelong learning, automation startups, Fortune 100 manufacturers, private businesses operating on an international scale, four colleges and an enlightened and connected regional leadership and you have the recipe for making good things happen.

Port Colborne, a Francophone designated city, is ideally located in the Niagara Region which has close to 425,000 people. It is near major urban centres such as Hamilton and the GTA, while only being thirty minutes from Western New York and the Buffalo region. GO Transit trains are on the horizon which increases its accessibility even further. We at Business in Focus caught up with the Mayor of Port Colborne, John Maloney, to find out about the impressive amount of progress the city has undergone over the last four years since we last spoke.

Logistics is all about managing the movement and storage of goods from “the point of origin to the point of consumption for the purpose of conforming to customer requirements. This definition includes inbound, outbound, internal, and external movements,” explains the Lombard, Illinois-based Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP).