It also contains a fair amount of bureaucratic jargon, including terms like "central, yet collaborative," "culture of systems" and "cross-cutting challenges" that can cause the public's eyes to glaze over. The plan segments the local economy into a group of interdependent "clusters," representing advanced manufacturing, the creative economy, food and agriculture, and hospitality and tourism. While the effort and imagination invested in the Berkshire Blueprint is a testament to the dedication of its authors, the final product is less of a specific "blueprint" and more of a general treatise on how the Berkshires economy should be conceptually compartmentalized for more efficient tweaking by the region's movers and shakers.
The numerical suffix "2.0" in the plan's title imbues an aura of high-tech currency, and creates a sense of anticipation that the contents of the 80-page report, two years in the making, will lay out a specific pathway for Berkshire County businesses and entities to follow. Last Friday, 1Berkshire released Berkshire Blueprint 2.0. In fact, the state designates economic development agencies - the local example being 1Berkshire, a group of local business leaders - to attempt to shape, guide, coordinate and encourage economic activity and growth.Īgencies, especially state-sanctioned ones, produce action plans - and Berkshire County has been operating since 2007 under the aegis of the Berkshire Blueprint, a comprehensive economic prescription that has been rendered gradually obsolete by developments on the ground. Berkshire residents might be forgiven for assuming that the businesses, nonprofit organizations and public entities that comprise the local economy either hum along or fail as a result of natural market forces.
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