About Us

The principals of Strategy-Nets understand the dynamics of developing and implementing complex strategies in open networks.  The primary challenge of civic leadership today is to create and sustain adaptive regional economies. By definition, an adaptive economy has the built-in ability to renew itself by continuously developing new connections. Relationship bring renewal.

• In open networks, strategy emerges from a fast, flexible process that encourages learning. It must be a disciplined process, not a chaos of disconnected meetings or the empty rituals of strategic planning.
• Strategic Doing leads to strategic learning. It balances open participation with leadership direction; creativity with execution; and purposeful conversation with the effective online collaboration.
• The Internet plays a major role in effective, loosely joined networks.  It is a massive enabler, every bit as profound as the introduction of electrical power.
  
• The key to this process is to never sit still. Strategy involves continuous process of creating new connections, shaping meaningful outcomes, defining clear pathways, and taking next steps.

If you want to take your collaborations to the next level, we are committed to taking this journey with you.

Ed Morrison

Ed Morrison focuses on the integration of workforce development and economic development. To facilitate this integration, he has developed new approaches to economic and workforce development, called Open Source Economic Development.
These frameworks emphasize that both workforce development and economic development take place in a "civic space" outside the four walls of any one organization. Within this civic space, we need to develop new habits and disciplines of collaboration, a practice Ed calls "Strategic Doing".

Ed is Economic Policy Advisor to the Purdue Center for Regional Development and the founder of I-Open, a non-profit corporation that promotes the practices of open innovation in economic development and workforce development. I-Open is a spin-out from Case Western Reserve University.

Ed is on the board of the University Economic Development Association. He teaches advanced strategy with the Economic Development Institute at the University of Oklahoma. He also serves on the Regional Experts Committee of the Council on Competitiveness. Ed holds a B.A. degree from Yale University and J.D and M.B.A. degrees from the University of Virginia.

Linda Fowler

Linda provided leadership for Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP), a nationwide network to help manufacturers grow and thrive. MEP, an entity within the US Department of Commerce,  assists manufacturers in adopting manufacturing technologies and business best practices, identifying and leveraging resources, and converting emerging trends into new opportunities.   Linda holds a B.A. degree from Kalamazoo College and and M.A. degree from the University of Michigan. Among her many accomplishments, Linda:

• Managed review and performance support for affiliates in 50 states and Puerto Rico that serve 16,000 manufacturers, The services in 2006 resulted in 3.1 billion dollars in new sales, 1.1 billion dollars in cost saving and the creation or retention of 52,000 jobs
• Played an integral role in developing partnerships with private sector, states, universities, community colleges, economic development organizations, as well as other federal agencies
• Designed and deployed MEP University to serve 1600 field staff and 385,000 small and medium manufacturers
• Collaborated with private sector to build and test a process to achieve technology translation that leads to successful technology transfer and deployment

Larry Taylor

Coming to Strategy-Nets with a thirty-year entrepreneurial background, Larry Taylor was president of a graphic arts company and developer of a successful 55 room country inn and retreat center. He has been co-founder/president of two civic organizations: one for historic preservation and revitalization of commercial districts and one to bring civic leaders together for informal, off the record discussions about ‘community quality of life’ both of which were deemed great successes. He continues years of volunteer work serving on the boards of I-Open, two arts organizations, two homeowner associations, a church board, and as programming co-chair for an international service club. One of his interests since 1999 has been volunteering as a docent at historic West Baden Springs resort during restoration and re-opening, connecting with guests and visitors seeking out a unique hospitality experience in a society that sometimes forgets to renew and reflect.
 
Following his business experiences, Larry moved to not-for-profit development and management first as Executive Director of The Columbia Club Foundation from 2001-2008 with an eighteen month interim (2005-06) to serve as Director of Advancement for the Indiana Humanities Council. During this interim time he helped create local and regional gatherings and two statewide summits to encourage civic leaders and citizens to engage in new leadership, education, and cultural enrichment opportunities.
 
Larry holds a B.A. in Communications Arts and Sciences from DePauw University/Greencastle IN and a M.S.E. from Indiana University/Bloomington in Instructional Systems Technology. He enjoys finding ways to connect people, encouraging civility in interactions, and helping individuals and groups to identify and attract resources needed to make them more prosperous to build vibrant, quality, and connected communities.  He remains concerned and a student of the challenges in funding and governance of non-profits, the need to learn from history and culture, the future of serious journalism and might be the lasting-legacy for the baby boomers.

Advisors

Reid Conrad

Reid has over 20 years of experience in the software industry. Prior to co-founding Near-Time, Reid co-founded Commerciality, a strategic consulting firm for middle stage software companies. Previously, Reid co-founded Extensibility, a leading provider of XML solutions, and served as its President and CEO which was acquired by TIBCO Software, Inc. in September 2000.

Extensibility was named one of the top 100 emerging companies by Computerworld in 2000. Prior to Extensibility, he founded the Enterprise Solutions division at Tiger Direct, acquired by Global Direct in 1995. Reid served as the Executive Vice President of Qualitas, growing the memory management vendor's customer base 7 fold over a 3 year period. Reid serves on several boards and was the prior Chairman of of the Council of Entrepreneurial Development, the largest independent entrepreneurial development organization in the US. Reid holds a BA from the University of the South and an MBA from the American University.

Lee Buck

An inveterate entrepreneur, Lee helped build a succession of software companies that anticipated and benefited from successive waves of technology adoption.

Most recently, Lee was the co-founder and Chief Technology Office of Near-Time. Near-Time enables organizations to leverage web 2.0 technologies to build more dynamic interactive relationships with customers, partners and other stakeholders. Near-Time continues to serve thousands of users in diverse markets.

Previously, Lee was the co-founder and CTO of Extensibility, Inc. a leading provider of XML solutions, acquired by TIBCO Software, Inc. After the acquisition Lee served as TIBCO's VP & Chief Scientist, XML Technologies. Lee is a recognized authority on XML and schema and has helped shape a number of Internet standards by serving on committees such as the W3C's XML Schema Working Group.

Prior to Extensibility, Lee founded Software Designs Unlimited helping clients such as National Geographic Society, Simon & Schuster and McGraw Hill to bring educational and informational resources to computers via CD-ROMs. Lee was also an award winning author of an AppleScript Rapid Application Development tool bundled by Apple Computer.

Lee began his career at Arthur Andersen serving as a senior consultant to clients such as AT&T, Brooklyn Union Gas and UPS. He received a B.S. in Systems Engineering from UVa.

Strategy Nets: The Back Story

Over three years ago, Reid Conrad and Lee Buck, the founders of Near-Time, Inc. met Ed Morrison, the founder of Strategy-Nets, LLC.

Near Time has developed powerful, interactive platform of Web 2.0 tools to support collaboration among loosely joined people and organizations

Morrison, a former strategy consultant and now economic policy advisor at the Purdue Center for Regional Development, has developed a new approach to strategy in open networks, called Strategic Doing.  

Based on insights from open source software development, Strategic Doing enables teams to get complex projects done in an open network. Morrison was looking for a  sophisticated, yet easy-to-use Internet platform.  Morrison's work focuses on a sophisticated set of collaboration challenges to meet the challenges of building competitive regional economies. 

Strategy-Nets will focus on the large, untapped market of federal, state and local government agencies and non-profit organizations. These entities are looking to collaborate with public and private sector partners to accelerate education and workforce transformation and stimulate regional economic development and job creation.

Morrison’s work around Strategic Doing for community action and regional development has laid the groundwork for Strategy-Nets. Government and civic leaders understand the growing importance of collaborating with corporate and non-profit organizations at federal, state and local levels. The melding of Near-Time and Strategic Doing is timely, as organizations realize that traditional strategy approaches are too expensive and slow. 

Here are some examples: 

North Central Indiana.-- The 14 county region around Purdue University provides a powerful pilot for using Strategic Doing to redesign a regional economic development strategy and promote a new pattern of open innovation. With a $15 million investment by the federal government, the region has generated over fifty new initiatives in four focus areas of education, workforce and economic development. Each of these initiatives includes metrics. They are also replicable, scalable and sustainable. By following the disciplines of Strategic Doing, the administrative overhead to manage these initiatives is remarkably lean. One full time professional is able to track the metrics on each initiative. One professional oversees the metrics on all the initiatives.

Strategic Doing in open networks creates surprising innovations that are replicable, sustainable, and scalable.Here's an example: a guitar manufacturing workshop for high school students.

Milwaukee 7’s Regional Workforce Alliance and Water Council.-- Seven counties in southeast Wisconsin have come together to form the Milwaukee 7. The region is adopting Strategic Doing to link, leverage and align assets across organizational and political boundaries. The Regional Workforce Alliance fosters this spirit of collaboration as it builds a new talent development infrastructure for the region. The Milwaukee 7 Water Council emerged from this new approach to strategy. Linkages among leaders in workforce development, economic development and business have led to a vibrant, internationally recognized cluster focused on freshwater technology.

This video shows how connections quickly formed three months after a Strategic Doing workshop. These new connections defined new opportunities. Brian Thompson of the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee Research Foundation illustrated these connections in the following animation.

Community Renewal International (CRI).-- Traditional approaches to rebuilding inner-city neighborhoods do not work. Community Renewal International has pioneered the development of a new approach, based on open networks, intentional relationships and Strategic Doing. By focusing on reestablishing the critical networks within the neighborhood, CRI has demonstrated dramatic reductions in crime rates and improvements in educational attainment. CRI is expanding its model to embrace sustainable energy technologies, as it rebuilds low income neighborhoods.

This video shows the remarkable results that can come from a commitment to building networks in our poorest neighborhoods.