Several presentations at the Hometown Summit have featured the positive role that universities and colleges and other types of research institutions, such as non-profit think tanks, can play in helping their host community develop and grow.

Erie, PA, for example, has a homegrown think tank, the Jefferson Educational Society, which brings in researchers and big thinkers from other places and helps them apply their work to the local context.

24 educational institutions in the Milwaukee area have launched the Commons, an effort to train students to become entrepreneurs and get them more engaged in the region, increasing the chances that they stay after graduation.

I was impressed by the unifying feature of all of these institutions: a core mission statement or goal of helping their host city, specifically around economic growth. Johns Hopkins University, for example, has laid out specific goals around talent attraction & retention for the City of Baltimore AND the University. Even better, they have goals around increasing city tax revenue.

So ask yourself if your community’s institutions have similar goals. If not, the advice from the speakers at the Hometown Summit is to ask and keep asking, taking advantage of the decentralized “silos” of these institutions to not take no for an answer. If the college president’s office doesn’t have the interest or the budget to take on these challenges, there’s a good chance another institute or office within the broader organization will.