Chambers Thinking Past Boundaries

Partnerships are among the oldest business and political concepts on Earth. Throughout history, competing interests have forged enormous strength as allies focused on a common cause.

Those dynamics drove a historic trip this month, billed as a Congressional Summit, when the Dallas Regional Chamber and the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce traveled to Washington, D.C., as allies to meet with congressional representatives and policymakers about regionally shared concerns and issues.

When Sen. John Cornyn met with the group, he joked that if Dallas and Fort Worth can band together, there’s hope for finding peace in the Middle East.
But there’s a new reality in today’s tough economy that cities and states must face: the need to unite as regions, crossing city limits and even state lines, to build the regional strength needed to meet challenges that transcend boundaries.

The new phrase for that in economic development circles is “regional innovation clusters” in which governmental entities shift from self-focused competitive stances to alliances as an essential way of doing business and commanding political authority in the 21st century.

Assistant Secretary of Commerce John Fernandez noted the importance of regionalism in testimony a few weeks ago before the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.

In a progress report to the panel on projects funded with American Recovery and Reinvestment Act money, Fernandez said there is concentrated effort on “fostering regional innovation that builds on an area’s competitive advantage.”

Economic Development Administration programs are “designed to support job creation and stronger regional economies,” he said. “To achieve this, EDA is particularly focusing on programs that build upon … regional collaboration.”

That’s actually a longstanding practice in Dallas and Fort Worth. Our combined economic engines generate 32 percent of Texas’ Gross State Product and the sixth largest Gross Metropolitan Product in the United States ($384.8 billion in 2009).

Southern Business & Development magazine recently named “DFW” the top market of the decade. We are known around the world as “DFW.”

We are known as well for the challenges we share on a regional basis. Heading into another decade of growth, Dallas, Fort Worth and the counties in their metropolitan divisions must jointly contend with congested highway and rail transportation, water supply issues and air quality. Education carries more urgency than ever in developing a competitive workforce for all.

When the Dallas and Fort Worth chambers journeyed to Washington, the stakes involved quality of life and prosperity for a population of 6.5 million people in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metropolitan Region’s 12-county area.

Pressing matters, including the mounting federal deficit and discussions about the new health care policy, kept the April 20-22 summit filled with briefings.

And there were other forms of information-exchange at work, including the use of social media for the first time. Both chambers used Facebook postings or Twitter “tweets” to keep our members, the news media and followers updated on the trip’s progress.

Officials applauded the DFW partnership as a prime example of a “regional innovation cluster.” But that’s an appellation better reserved for emerging partnerships elsewhere in the U.S.

Dallas and Fort Worth chambers have been leading the way on such efforts. While we traveled to Washington together for the first time, we have partnered for years in other ways.

With annual joint board meetings, joint international trade missions to Canada and China, and shared advocacy efforts in Austin, we are poised to further capitalize on our shared brand:
DFW -- the Where, with All.

David Corrigan, Chairman, Dallas Regional Chamber
Wes Turner, Immediate Past Chairman, Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce