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GEM initiatives contribute positively to the change, through relationship building efforts
Some of the most important work we do at GEM involves working with our partners to nurture business relationships throughout the region.
By connecting organizations in Southeast Michigan via dedicated networking opportunities, our goal is to foster new partnerships, enable collaborative innovation, and measure our own success in shaping the future of mobility in the Detroit Region. The process helps support organizations throughout the ecosystem and improves access to business development resources.
A recent event is a perfect example: Collective Impact: Driving Change in Our Mobility Ecosystem allowed various mobility organizations in the region to come together, connect, and collaborate in small groups to solve real-world challenges. Bigger picture, GEM has been working with research organizations to measure the evolution of relationship-building efforts among mobility companies in the Detroit Region.
Measuring the Mobility Sector’s Collaborative Evolution
To conduct this research, GEM partnered with Orange Sparkle Ball and the University of Kansas Social Innovation Lab to create a social network analysis of the region’s mobility ecosystem. The analysis examines relationships between organizations through surveys sent to organizations supporting the mobility ecosystem in the region. The survey asked participants to detail their organization’s working relationships with and awareness of their organizations taking part in the mobility ecosystem.
The first round of data, collected in 2023, spanned 155 organizations in the GEM network. The goal with this first stage was to create a strong baseline for measurement: By understanding how these organizations interacted early in GEM’s investment in relationship-building efforts, future research would help quantify the impact of GEM’s efforts on the ecosystem’s connectivity.
Across the 155 organizations surveyed in the first round, a total of 7,300 connections emerged with a connection density of 61.2%. In year one, connections were focused on a small group of well-connected organizations, indicating that a small group of organizations were highly influential in the ecosystem, something GEM wanted to change.
The 2023 study concluded that there were many opportunities available to strengthen cross-sector connections to unlock the Detroit mobility ecosystem’s full economic potential. These opportunities would serve as key focus areas for GEM’s initiatives in the years to come.
In the second round of research, conducted in 2024, the survey covered 184 organizations. Across these 184 organizations, 7,800 connections were logged. In this round, the connection density was much lower, at 46.3%, meaning the ecosystem was more loosely connected, with more organizations participating. A more loosely connected ecosystem allows for influence to be shared between more organizations, resulting in more equity in information sharing and relationships across the ecosystem.
That meant a larger variety of organizations are involved and sharing information with one another. This change reflects GEM’s success in relationship building as well as the progress toward an innovation ecosystem.
What This Shift Means
The research has shown a significant shift in the way mobility organizations are interacting with one another and forming relationships. The new patterns of interaction suggest that the local mobility industry is evolving into an innovation ecosystem rather than a traditional manufacturing ecosystem.
Innovation ecosystems reflect an interest in sharing ideas, an increase in inter-industry relationships, and the creation of new opportunities. Organizations focus primarily on supporting one another, growing their collaborative networks, and sharing information.
The Social Network Analysis data provides strategies for future growth in the ecosystem, including creating new informal relationships across members of the ecosystem, bringing new organizations to the Detroit mobility ecosystem, reaching out to organizations who do things not traditionally related to mobility and engage private sector participation in the ecosystem. These growth strategies guide GEM in its work to expand the reach of the Detroit region mobility ecosystem.
Another round of Social Network Analysis is set to be conducted in fall of 2025 to further explore relationships across the evolving Detroit mobility ecosystem. Despite similar one-round social network analyses have been performed in other parts of the United States before, GEM and its research partners have found no evidence of ongoing social network studies tracking relationship-building and ecosystem shifts over the span of several years like GEM’s Social Network Analysis.
For more information about GEM’s initiatives, visit: https://gemdetroitregion.com/.