Greater MSP and the talent pool: A mission to ease the election's ills

How about a little purple as an antidote to the postelection blues? That's what Greater MSP, the region's five-year-old economic development organization, provided on the 50-yard line at U.S. Bank Stadium last Tuesday night — a blend of Vikings color plus the haze and sound of Prince tribute band Purple Xperience.

Mind you, the election was not the preferred focus of Greater MSP's leaders at their annual meeting/pep rally. "I choose not to take too much time on this topic," Richard Davis of U.S. Bancorp said half-apologetically during his opening remarks, plainly referring to the election without uttering the word.

Davis then allowed that he'd observed widespread local "concern and angst about what's happened in the past week" and suggested that Greater MSP is "a group of people [that] can help manage through that process, and create hope and create belief in a future that hasn't happened yet."

Hanging out in a huge sports arena with about 1,000 local business and civic glitterati may not be everyone's idea of healing balm after a bruising election. But I found myself nodding in agreement as Davis said, "Greater MSP is here at the right time for our community."

I'd go farther: Surviving and thriving through the Donald Trump era seems likely to require doing more of what Greater MSP is proving is still possible. It's showing that Minnesotans can still set aside partisan differences, pool their resources and pursue a common goal.

By the numbers, Greater MSP is working. It claims at least partial credit for bringing more than 25,000 jobs and $3.2 billion in capital investment to the Twin Cities since its 2011 founding, well exceeding its initial goals. It's led by an intentionally mixed board of politicians, businesspeople, educators and nonprofit leaders, Republicans and DFLers, white folks and brown folks, city and suburbanites, men and women. It's promoting this region's assets and — maybe by example, maybe more directly — shaming other business groups into stifling their chronic criticism of Minnesota's business climate. It's strengthening the Twin Cities' civic connective tissue as it touts a shared vision.

The vision: Talent-based prosperity. That's right for the times, too.

Greater MSP's contribution to solving that problem is a talent recruitment and retention effort it calls "Make It. MSP." Its focus is young professionals. For those already here, it offers cross-industry networking opportunities to make them more happily at home in the Gopher State. For those elsewhere — particularly millennials who grew up in Minnesota and were lured away by schools and jobs — "Make It" offers hip invitations to give MSP a try.

As the parent of two millennial-generation Minnesota expats, I'm rooting for this venture to be a huge success.

But I'd like to see Greater MSP wade deeper into two other pools of potential talent: The Minnesotans who grew up here on the wrong side of this state's notorious achievement gap, and the new Minnesotans who have arrived by way of immigration. Both of those groups look likely to need allies like Greater MSP gang during the nation's Trumpian years.

Among the members of the Greater MSP board is Steven Rosenstone, the soon-to-retire chancellor of the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities. That higher-ed system has seen the nonwhite share of its student body climb from 16 percent to nearly 26 percent in the past 10 years. That's a move in an economically essential direction, given that an estimated 70 percent of the state's population growth in the next 25 years will consist of people of color.

As Rosenstone could tell Greater MSP, his system is not in good financial health. Fixing that problem by asking low-income students to pay more seems neither feasible nor strategically smart. My guess is that some of the handsomely dressed people seated on the stadium turf Tuesday night might have a notion about better ways to keep the Minnesota State system flourishing for the students who need it most.

Stats like those should be shouted from every business bully pulpit in this state — especially if President Trump keeps talking the way Candidate Trump did about immigrants. Trump's 1,323,000 Minnesota voters might not know that a worsening skilled worker shortage is forecast for this state in the next decade as baby boomers exit the workforce. Minnesota badly needs what well-educated immigrants can bring — and it badly needs to educate more of its immigrants. Business organizations that can rent U.S. Bank Stadium for an annual meeting appear to have the wherewithal to trumpet that message.