Morgan Clevenger, Ph.D., associate professor of management at Hiram College, has been invited to serve as a co-investigator on a research project alongside a team of faculty from The Ohio State University. The project, “Understanding High Growth Companies in Declining Northeast Ohio,” identifies and analyzes the strategies, growth patterns, and local systems of high-growth firms in several counties in Northeast Ohio. The industrial rust belt region of Youngstown, Akron, and Canton region has suffered population decline since the 1980s, but preliminary analysis by the researchers uncovers that the region still hosts hundreds of rapidly growing firms in various industrial sectors. The team is focusing their research on high-growth firms that have doubled their revenue within three years, with ending revenue of more than $1 million.
Yas Motoyama, Ph.D., assistant professor of city and regional planning at Ohio State is serving as the principal investigator of the project, alongside Tijs Van Maasakkers, Ph.D., associate professor of city and regional planning at Ohio State, and Sehun Oh, Ph.D., assistant professor in the College of Social Work at Ohio State.
Dr. Clevenger received a $5,000 sub-award grant for the research project, which was funded by a grant awarded to the research team at Ohio State from the Burton D. Morgan Foundation.