How do we build competitive communities?

In our own way, each of us can take four practical steps to meet our challenges of competing in a global economy.

• First, we can build brainpower by encouraging our schools and businesses to work more closely together, to build a flexible, responsive K-14 system. We have simple messages to deliver.

Every child must read by the 4th grade. High school is no longer a ticket to the middle class. Every child needs a career path that includes postsecondary education. And dropping out of high school—for any reason—is simply unacceptable.

• Second, we can encourage innovation and entrepreneurship, turning brainpower into business. Not just with start-up companies, but with all our companies. This is all about schools, colleges and universities connecting to business owners and managers. But let’s not stop at business. We need to start teaching these skills early...in primary and secondary schools.

• Third, we can build quality places, places that celebrate our uniqueness, our heritage, our history. Quality places are important because they bring us together; they shape our shared identity; they provide us anchors to which we can return.

• Fourth, we can teach the skills of conducting a dialogue. Above all, this means learning to listen respectfully to one another. With these skills, we can build trust...the life blood of both our economy and our democracy. It’s time to take the lessons we are learning here today and begin building lasting and powerful regional relationships within Oklahoma. Faced with global competition, no community has the resources to go it alone.