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Cleveland's Economic Restructuring Well Underway, CSU Report Says

A new report due out Monday from Cleveland State University confirms that Northeast Ohio is moving from a Rust Belt economy to a "knowledge economy." ideastreams Sarah Jane Tribble reports that the region's combined focus on higher education and medical innovation is driving the shift.

International technology giant IBM announced earlier this week that it's buying Explorys - a Cleveland database company that holds some 50 million medical records.  That was big news for Cleveland, the health care industry and researchers at Cleveland State University.

Richey Piiparinen, director of CSU's Center for Population Dynamics, says the deal only illuminates an economic shift already happening in Cleveland.

"There is a center of gravity of health innovation here that is pulling the world's biggest tech firms because they know that Cleveland is the place to be," Piiparinen says.

The economic shift is essentially moving from building widgets to one that is fuled by the intellectual capital found at major universities and medical centers. Piiparinen says Cleveland has been slower to shift to this "knowledge economy" than neighboring Pittsburgh, but it could catch up within 5 to 10 years.

The challenge now, he says, is to connect the blue-collar workers to the emerging economy.