This is the wrong way to do this. Cleveland needs to target universities across the country that have foreign students, work with them to get proper immigration status, and then convince them to move to Cleveland. For one thing, there’s no way that people from Silicon Valley, Raleigh-Durham and Austin are going to move to Cleveland after comparing and contrasting. For another thing, there are talented students, native and foreign, attending universities all over the United States who are willing to move for a decent opportunity.

Sorry to break the news, but Cleveland says it is going to try to compete against established heavy-hitters in the global economy but is ignoring the niche they have…. which is befriending educated foreign immigrants, working with them to get proper immigration status, speaking of development opportunity and low-cost of living and then figuring out to cluster college graduates and then build their own creative “Great Lakes Tech Region.”

This is amazing to me…. everyone wants to be the next Silicon Valley, but they are oh-so-willing to overlook their underleveraged assets and potential to do their own thing. Cleveland is a nice town actually. Leaders just need to figure out that people will probably move to Cleveland not to create a “knock-off” of Silicon Valley, but to build a personalized Cleveland identity.