The Northeast Ohio Region finished with the highest number of closed projects
Team NEO released its annual performance and impact report, sharing that the organization, in partnership with JobsOhio and the Northeast Ohio Economic Development Network, worked on 104 projects that will generate almost 7,500 jobs, $440 million in annual payroll and $1.5 billion in capital investment for the region.
According to Team NEO CEO Bill Koehler, there are many factors that play into this success, including unprecedented investment in innovation and infrastructure, sparking growth and building economic momentum. “We are positioned for significant, sustained growth as companies see the value of making significant investments in Northeast Ohio,” Koehler added, “and the most impactful factor to sustain this growth is the Northeast Ohio Region’s increasingly robust, coordinated network of economic development professionals.”
Team NEO’s annual report features 2021 highlights and case studies illustrating Team NEO’s progress in addressing its five key strategies:
- Strengthening a Better Coordinated Regional Economic Development Network to make new business happen
- As one of the six network partners for JobsOhio, Team NEO worked with its partners to conduct nearly 1,000 business retention calls and worked on 279 projects. The team connected businesses to resources for job creation and retention, increased regional investment and business growth in 2021.
- Team NEO also met with 218 elected officials at the federal, state and local levels across the 18-county region to identify opportunities to strengthen communities through Team NEO and JobsOhio programming.
- Advancing Technology Adoption to make the Northeast Ohio Region’s economy more productive, resilient and globally competitive:
- Team NEO facilitates the Smart Manufacturing Cluster, bringing together business, higher education, professional service firms, incubators and others to collectively advance the technology’s adoption rate.
- The Smart Manufacturing Cluster is a platform for encouraging technology adoption, convening potential industry collaborators, and solving common manufacturing industry problems. In 2021, the Manufacturing Advocacy and Growth Network (MAGNET) launched “Make It Better: A Blueprint for Manufacturing in Northeast Ohio.” The Blueprint offers a vision of our region as a world leader in smart manufacturing. The Smart Manufacturing Cluster is a key component of the Blueprint.
- Addressing the Talent Supply/Demand Gap by focusing on talent availability to attract new business investment:
- In 2021, Team NEO released its fifth annual Aligning Opportunities report, a data-rich research report to equip the Northeast Ohio Region’s education, talent and workforce ecosystems with insights into the state of current and emerging needs of our region’s employers.
- In 2020, we launched Misaligned Opportunities, a supplement, offering a deep dive into how racial inequity affects our talent pipeline. And in 2021, we launched a second supplement, Lost Opportunities, examining gender inequities in our region’s talent pool and the significant impacts that the pandemic had on women in the workforce.
- Growing a Pipeline of Competitive Sites to win more projects:
- Published four new marketing brochures in 2021 to RightSites, an online resource featuring our region’s most competitive properties.
- In September, Team NEO and The Fund for Our Economic Future published Where Matters, a report analyzing new approaches to business location decisions and their impact on equity, sustainability, and talent.
- Promoting Regional and Network Performance to create more opportunity for the region:
- One million digital impressions reached key target audiences including site selection consultants and c-level executives; one million digital impressions reached HR professionals, c-level executives and emerging talent audiences promoting Aligning Opportunities series data; and more than 7,500 website pageviews on Team NEO website pages promoting sites and buildings.
- Signature events reached 1,300 key stakeholders in 2021.
About Team NEO
Team NEO is a private, nonprofit economic development organization accelerating business growth and job creation throughout the 18 counties of the Northeast Ohio Region. As the designated JobsOhio Network Partner, we align and amplify local economic development efforts in the region’s 18-counties; we conduct research and data analysis to inform local conversations and influence solutions; we market the Northeast Ohio Region; and we work to increase access to jobs, education and training for the region’s 4.3 million people. We do this to build a more vibrant regional economy; one that is more talented, equitable, competitive, innovative, resilient and prosperous. For more information, visit teamneo.org.
About JobsOhio
JobsOhio is a private nonprofit economic development corporation designed to drive job creation and new capital investment in Ohio through business attraction, retention and expansion. The organization also works to seed talent production in its targeted industries and to attract talent to Ohio through Find Your Ohio. JobsOhio works with six regional partners across Ohio: Dayton Development Coalition, Ohio Southeast Economic Development, One Columbus, REDI Cincinnati, Regional Growth Partnership and Team NEO. Learn more at www.jobsohio.com. Follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.