The purpose of Cuyahoga Innovation Zones (CIZ) is to create unique collaborations among economic development organizations and private industry throughout cuyahoga County and to increase the rate of innovation in the local economy.
The Cuyahoga County Board of County Commissioners authorized the creation of the new Cuyahoga Innovation Zones (CIZ) Program to promote collaboration and spur economic development. The CIZ Program leverages the economic development capacity of the region and accelerates the rate of innovation in Cuyahoga County. The program provides an incentive to economic development organizations to work together and draw upon one another’s core economic development strengths.
An innovation zone is a business-friendly environment comprised of a network of private industry, non-profit, and institutional organizations focused on a unique commercial market opportunity of the regional economy (some examples are consumer product industrial design, electronic imagining, and paints and coatings). The initiative encourages businesses, researchers, universities, entrepreneurs and community leaders to establish a strategic place-based economic development plan. The plan lays out how partnering organizations will work together to promote a commercially viable market opportunity and create a zone of economic activity with critical mass.
This program was developed by the Cuyahoga County Department of Development to support the Board of County Commissioner’s goals of creating new jobs, increasing property values and fostering new business opportunities in Cuyahoga County.
How the CIZ Program Works
A minimum of two anchor partners are required to establish an innovation zone. The anchor partnership must consist of at least one nonprofit economic development organization and one or more organizations (private industry, college or university, municipality, or a leading research and development organization) with unique capacity to assess and understand the underlying market focus of the Zone.
The anchor partnership provides initial leadership, resources, and funding, to develop an Innovation Zone Business Plan. The plan identifies a specific commercial market focus for the zone (such as aerospace manufacturing or international business attraction). The anchor partners together guide the development of the zone and evaluate progress with a consistent set of metrics.
The funding process for launching, developing, and branding a Cuyahoga Innovation Zone follows two phases with each phase requiring matching funds.
- Phase I provides funding for outlining the zone development plan that will drive innovation within the zone and to secure major relationships necessary to make the zone financially self-sustaining. Funding of $5,000 to $20,000 is available for innovation zone business planning grant. See Examples of Existing Winners