The announcement last week that Signature Healthcare will relocate its corporate headquarters to Louisville illustrates the optimal outcome from a smart and sustained economic development strategy derived from the region’s true strengths.
Signature, which owns and operates 66 nursing homes in seven states, will bring 120 new corporate jobs to the region – plus another 39 anticipated from nine spin-off firms it has developed as part of its dedicated “intrapreneurial” ventures.
It’s the first entry in a sub niche that Greater Louisville Inc., the region’s economic development agency, has been exploring: sub-specialties to elaborate and complement the region’s long-standing focus on healthcare as a growth sector.
In this case, the new niche strategy will focus on services and care for the aging population, a natural fit for Louisville with its existing concentration of related firms.
Signature is ready, willing, and able to play in that strategy in ways that could make it an ideal model for the corporate citizen of the future. In addition to its own corporate headquarters, and its internal focus on developing new ventures (“intrapreneurial”), its commitment to Louisville includes a partnership with the University of Louisville’s Nucleus: Kentucky’s Life Sciences and Innovation Center.
That partnership will establish the International Center for Long Term Care Innovation which Signature and U of L will jointly fund, with commitments of $1.5 million each, to accelerate development of early-stage health technology and companies aimed at the aging-care industry. Plans for the center include establishing a $5 million seed-capital fund for companies working in those fields.
It’s all pretty heady stuff, and it also illustrates the new approach to economic development: identify clusters of related firms and the competitive advantages that lead them to cluster and exploit those natural affinities and strengths with a smart, consistent, and persistent strategy.
The one, final, and perhaps most important point: all that went into landing the Signature headquarters reflected the refined ability of state and local economic development teams to coordinate and leverage their efforts. That's smart strategy.