Our leading initiative, Restoring Prosperity to Ohio, is a multi-faceted, non-partisan policy and advocacy strategy aimed at broad-based state-level and strategic federal policy reforms designed to facilitate Ohio’s transition to our next economy. An outgrowth of a long-standing partnership with the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program, Restoring Prosperity: Transforming Ohio’s Communities for the Next Economy is a comprehensive blueprint for transitioning Ohio into an economy that is export-oriented, lower-carbon, and innovation-fueled. The Restoring Prosperity Initiative also recognizes that Ohio’s multiple metropolitan areas – fully encompassing urban, suburban and rural places – house the resources and drivers of prosperity necessary to lead the state into the next economy, but these resources and prosperity drivers need to be leveraged. Our agenda complements numerous state and local initiatives currently underway, as Ohioans navigate their way toward reshaping the state’s economic landscape, and emphasizes the value of public-private partnerships and our philanthropic community.

Ohio and its regions face many challenges as they prepare to enter the next economy, so Greater Ohio’s Restoring Prosperity agenda advocates that the state must:

• Leverage and invest in key prosperity drivers, including innovation, human capital, infrastructure, and quality places, to maximize our economic strengths;
• Catalyze transformative changes in government both as a response to our state’s fiscal crisis and to make our regions more competitive in a global economy; and
• Engage with and lead the federal government by seizing federal funding opportunities and influencing policies that can help hard-hit industrial states find their footing in the next economy.

This report follows up on Restoring Our Prosperity: The State Role in Revitalizing Ohio's Core Communities released in 2008.  To revitalize the state's core communities and reinvigorate their economic competitiveness, Greater Ohio and the Brookings Institution unveiled the Restoring Prosperity to Ohio Initiative at a Summit in Columbus attended by more than 1,000 business, community and political leaders throughout Ohio.