It's been a fascinating year in The Line-land. With a national economy showing some signs of life, but the unemployment numbers still hovering too high for comfort, and Euro-anxiety ratcheting up daily, we've been finding stories of growth and promise here in our backyard—whether it's a new public-sector initiative, an enterprise incubator, or a small, feisty tech or design firm that's made three new hires.
    
Among many adventures over the past year: I learned from U of M design dean Tom Fisher about the amazing ways that design thinking, here and elsewhere, is moving into previously alien fields like health care, politics, and agriculture. There's been an ongoing convergence of for-profit and nonprofit approaches to philanthropy, which The Line traced in the emergence of L3C companies and new thinking about nonprofit organization.

I weighed in the new "Minnesota hip"—how our longtime fusion of rural values and urban consciousness has naturally lined us up with an emerging green/local "edge" nationwide. And in that connection it's been exciting to watch our restaurant scene flourish by going simultaneously epicurean and down-to-earth, cosmopolitan and neighborhoody.

The C-Word
    
But one of the most gratifying trends I've discerned could be labeled with a word we used a couple of decades ago at Utne Reader magazine: coopetition.
    
Those of us who worked in what was then called the alternative press used this ungainly fusion of cooperation and competition to refer to the relationships we cultivated with publications that were our rivals for advertising and subscription dollars but our allies in the struggle for a greener, saner, more just nation.
    
What I've seen in the last year or so is coopetition emerging as a way of life for young entrepreneurs. Elizabeth Millard's feature focused on the phenomenon (it's had its ups and downs, as the subsequent struggles of Project Skyway show). Her piece was in my mind during a recent conversation with one of the cofounders of the CoCo coworking space, the articulate and far-seeing Jeff Heegaard (look for an interview with him in January). Jeff expressed the slightly bemused admiration of an elder for the young business-starters in CoCo, and their willingness to share tips, tricks, and other kinds of help with folks who were soon to be in the marketplace with them, competing.
    
Of course, we have a tradition of pulling together here on what Garrison Keillor insists on calling the "frozen tundra." Public spirit is in our bones, from the pioneer era through the years of grassroots, civic, and corporate cooperation that brought us our park system, the Guthrie Theater, and, more recently, our bike-friendly infrastructure.
    
But coopetition 2011/2012-style feels driven by other factors too. Sheer joy in geekdom and the possibilities of new technology. A game-playing spirit: the willingness, noted by Jeff, of twenty- and thirtysomethings to try stuff, fail, and try again. And maybe a deep-lying feeling for the ecological paradigm: that we do live and thrive together, that, as one of our Big Picture interviewees, Patricia Neal, put it, "your success is my success."

Beyond the Zero-Sum

I think we can see big-scale coopetition emerging with initiatives like Greater MSP, which aims to turn the not-always-friendly rivalry of our two cities into an economic-development and job-creation synergy. It's another form of the recognition that different enterprises, different cities, different groups ought to vigorously champion what makes them different and special--while remembering that the zero-sum game has always been a lie, and that working together to make the pie bigger for all benefits all.
    
Dare I suggest that our political representatives in Saint Paul and Washington try on the concept?

Jon Spayde is Managing Editor of The Line.


Photos, top to bottom:

Marti Nyman (l.) and Ernest Grumbles of MojoMN, a hub of coopetition in the tech-finance sector

Tom Fisher, dean of the U of M's College of Design, talks with Jon Spayde.

A breakout session of the 2011 Social Venture Partners convention in Minneapolis

A screen shot of Greater MSP's home page

All photos by Bill Kelley