Collaborations are essential to emerging “knowledge economy” centers.

The Great Recession may be over but the Great Resetting shows no signs of ending.

The global economy has changed – perhaps seismically, perhaps in ways that will challenge America’s leadership for years to come. Milwaukee is at the crossroads of that economic recalibration.

It is a city and a region that could continue to shed jobs and economic muscle, an outcome that would doom all of Wisconsin to indirectly share in its decline, or it could accelerate the process of remaking itself as an emerging center of the “knowledge economy.”

So long as Milwaukee’s recent trend toward working in partnerships continues, I’m betting it’s the latter.

A historic challenge has been Milwaukee’s go-it-alone business culture, in which everyone is a competitor and no one is a collaborator. That’s been changing for the better, and most noticeably in the last five or so years.

Read the Journal Sentinel commetary here.