The Initiative for a Competitive Inner City and Next Street set a new alliance to accelerate inner city economic development and job growth.

BOSTON, Sept. 20, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- ICIC, the nation's leading authority on inner city economic development, announced a strategic alliance with Next Street, the first merchant bank for urban enterprise, to accelerate the implementation of economic development strategies in low-income areas of U.S. cities.

What ICIC founder, Harvard Business School Professor Michael Porter, described as "a deep and ongoing collaboration" was announced at the Inner City Economic Summit, held at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. The Summit gathers civic, city and business leaders from across the U.S. to share innovative solutions to urban challenges. "We increasingly know what works in inner city economic and business development.  The challenge is implementation and scale across the country. We need to bring non-profits and for-profits together to drive results," Porter told Summit participants. "Next Street shares ICIC's vision, and will allow scaling of solutions around the country."

"This is the next chapter in a long-standing relationship," says Next Street founder and managing partner Tim Ferguson. "In recent years, ICIC and Next Street have worked together on a number of projects." In the latest project, ICIC research helped Boston and Detroit better support new small business growth in their food industry clusters. Next Street is continuing this work by helping small companies develop shared production facilities and prototyping a new kind of store that will provide perishables and healthy prepared foods to low-income areas of Boston at up to 60% off typical prices.

ICIC's focus will continue to be fundamental research, strategy, data collection and market making. "Inner cities have distinct economies and unique advantages," says ICIC CEO Mary Kay Leonard. "But they remain poorly understood. We provide the data and the analysis that public and private sector decision makers need to make the most of urban opportunities."

Next Street brings expertise in the critical disciplines growing businesses need most: financing, business planning, organizational development and marketing. The firm is now the leading capacity-building organization in Massachusetts, helping 80 small businesses scale up to win city and corporate contracts. Next Street also assists cities, states, and anchor institutions with urban economic development strategies. It has guided over $300 million in investment to community development projects as well as administering its own small business loan fund.

Both organizations share extensive national networks of government and institutional leaders, business executives and capital providers. "Getting things done in a complex urban environment requires alignment among public, private and non-profit actors," says Next Street president and founding partner Ronald L. Walker II. "Next Street and ICIC are both very, very good at that. The real value of our alliance will be in connecting our networks to spread best practices and help others be more effective."

To facilitate collaborating, ICIC will co-locate with Next Street at 184 Dudley Street in Roxbury, MA. "The two organizations will remain separate, with their own CEOs and management teams reporting to their respective boards," notes ICIC's Leonard. ICIC will remain a 501c3 mission driven organization, with its work freely available to all. A coordinating committee led by the founders of the two organizations, will oversee the joint activities that flow from the new collaboration.

ICIC and Next Street expect the new alliance to be up and running by January 1, 2013.

About ICIC.  The Initiative for a Competitive Inner City is a nonprofit research and strategy organization and the leading authority on U.S. inner city economies and the businesses that thrive there. Founded in 1994 by Harvard Business School Professor Michael Porter, ICIC expands inner city economies by providing businesses, governments and investors with the most comprehensive and actionable information in the field about urban market opportunities. ICIC's unique knowledge and expertise about inner city success factors and thriving companies is developed from specialized urban networks and path-breaking research. www.icic.org

About Next Street.  Next Street was founded in 2005 on the idea of providing growing companies in urban markets with the same level of expertise that investment banks, Madison Avenue, and the elite consultancies provide to Fortune 500 companies. Next Street portfolio companies now generate $600 million in annual revenues and employ over 4,000 people. The firm has worked with over 100 small businesses to date. To learn more about the firm's clients, partners and capabilities, please visit www.nextstreet.com.

SOURCE Initiative for a Competitive Inner City