The document outlines the work of the Mayor's Innovation Delivery Team (IDT) in Memphis, TN to promote neighborhood economic vitality. It discusses how the IDT used a series of low-cost, targeted, and community-driven programs and investments to spur revitalization in distressed neighborhoods. Key programs included MEMFix events to activate public spaces, MEMShop to incubate new businesses in vacant storefronts, and MEMobile food trucks to promote entrepreneurship. Through these initiatives, the IDT helped reduce vacancy rates, start over 30 new businesses, and generate over $20 million in private investment across target neighborhoods in Memphis.

1. The Case for
Innovation:
Neig hbor hood
Economic Vitality
Mayor’s Innovation Delivery Team
Memphis, TN

2. table of contents
a theory of change 2
background 3
rationale 6
programs & policies 8
neighborhood economic 19
vitality by the numbers
lessons learned 21
next steps 24
All photography and videos courtesy of Mayor’s Innovation Delivery Team, unless otherwise noted.

3. “It’s much easier to show people what you’re trying to
accomplish than just talk about it. The city was awakened to
the fact that things were going on, and it also made people
realize that it was okay to come here.”
Pat Brown
Historic Broad Avenue Business Association Past President
1
The story of Broad Avenue in Memphis demonstrates a theory: transformative change of a neighborhood
is possible through a series of low-cost, targeted, and community-driven investments.
In the words of Historic Broad Avenue Business Association Past President Pat Brown, “It’s much easier to
show people what you’re trying to accomplish than just talk about it. The city was awakened to the fact
that things were going on, and it also made people realize that it was okay to come here.”
She was referring to a weekend-long event called “A New Face for an Old Broad,”
held in November 2010, which included pop-up shops, live music and public art,
painting temporary bike lanes on the street, and other short-term, high-
impact activities. The total cost for the event was $20,000. Four years
later, Broad Avenue had seen an influx of $20 million in private
investment – all coming in increments of $1 million or less.
Municipal governments have not traditionally been
oriented to deliver these kinds of small, well-calibrated
investments, despite the clear and abundant economic
potential. Over three years and in concert with numerous
partner agencies and dedicated civic activists, the
Innovation Delivery Team (IDT) in Memphis began
changing this citywide conversation around civic
experimentation and achieving results.
“At its core, innovation is the
destruction of the assumption
that the pieces on the board are
the only pieces in the game. Our
challenge was to expand the game,
include more people, and add
more pieces to play with.”
- Abby Miller
1 a theory of change
Broad Avenue Art Walk
2

4. In 2011, Bloomberg Philanthropies, a charitable
organization founded and funded by then-New
York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, chose
to invest significantly in “spreading effective
programs and strategies between cities and
helping mayors work together in new ways
around solutions.” This initiative was predicated
on the core belief that cities and their mayors
are uniquely – and possibly exclusively – capable
of creating change and addressing serious
problems affecting our cities.
To test this idea, Bloomberg invested in the
creation of “innovation delivery teams” in
five cities: Atlanta, Chicago, Louisville, New
Orleans, and Memphis. Backed by a $24 million
grant, these cities’ mayors created teams
dedicated to fundamentally redesigning how
local governments do what they do. This grant
was one of the largest foundation-backed
efforts ever to test a structural approach to
increasing innovation capacity in government.
Each mayor selected high priority challenges
on which their teams could focus. In Memphis
the IDT looked at reducing youth gun violence
and generating economic vitality in some of
Memphis’ core city neighborhoods.
To staff his team, Mayor Wharton hired a team of
nine generalists to address these challenges. He
intentionally recruited project managers, data
analysts, and creative problem-solvers who
demonstrated an exceptional drive for impact
and possessed top-notch communication,
facilitation, project management, and problem-
solving skills. The team was intended to quickly
engage in these challenge areas, apply the
innovation process, test drive programs and
policies, and then be positioned to move on to
new challenges.
The team’s Neighborhood Economic Vitality
(NEV) work was led by Doug McGowen, IDT
Director, and NEV Program Managers Abby
Miller, Dorian Spears, and Tommy Pacello. Their
work commenced in January 2012.
Mayor Bloomberg recognized several critical
things about cities: first and foremost, they’re
growing, as the entire country becomes more
urbanized. Secondarily, cities are places where
things can happen. They are the form of
government closest to people, and so policy
implications are felt most immediately.
- Doug McGowen
2 background
3 4

5. “Vitality literally means “life,” and so our work was
about bringing a short-term boost of life to ignite
and inspire other investments”
– Doug McGowen
The most recent United States census confirmed that Memphis experienced a loss in population over the
preceding decade, a fact that had been somewhat obscured by the city’s longstanding policy of annexing
property at its borders. Between 1970 and 2010 the population of the City of Memphis grew by four percent
while its geographic area grew by 55 percent. As public policy blog Smart City Memphis put it in a May 2011
blog post:
“Memphis in 2000 had a population of 650,100. It annexed 40,000 people and had
a birth-death increase of at least 40,000 but wound up the decade with 3,211 fewer
people than it started with. [A]t least 80,000 more people moved out of Memphis than
moved in… The 1970 Census was the last federal decennial census to indicate that more
people were moving into Shelby County than moving away.”
This shift in population to the edge of the city coupled with aggressive annexation resulted in significant public
and private investment at the urban fringe at the expense of investing in the city core. Yet despite decades of
disinvestment, Memphis’ older historic neighborhoods continue to be its most productive resources.
Urban areas are themselves economic engines or drivers, intended to bring people, goods, services, and
institutions together in a manner that makes the transaction of commerce and transfer of knowledge more
efficient. The nationwide trend to urbanization intensifies those connections – and presents new challenges for
city leaders who were unprepared for them.
3 rationale
Before MEMShop
After MEMShop
5 6

6. While Memphis was facing some daunting
economic and cultural challenges, it was hardly
the only American city in this difficult situation.
Metropolitan areas across the country find
themselves grappling with many of these same
challenges. The IDT’s projects were obviously
localized to Memphis, but the outcomes realized
and the lessons learned are widely transferable.
Throughout the IDT’s neighborhood economic
vitality work, civic leaders, elected officials, and
activities nationwide looked to Memphis to learn,
adapt, and drive their own revitalization.
Memphis had become adept at and had the
organizational structure for large, costly capital
projects. While these projects have their place, a
deficit in capacity existed in the ability to deploy
small, nuanced investments that are also essential
for neighborhoods to thrive.
Grounded in research and guided by the
innovation delivery team model, the team
decided early on that its efforts would have
to be:
Place-based, in that each initiative must have
some tangible and visual impact on the public
realm, be it cleaning a street, financing a storefront
improvement, or activating a vacant lot.
Informed by evidence of success in other cities.
Ideas and initiatives developed by IDT would
emanate from the best practices – and, in some
cases, failed attempts – of innovators nationwide.
Build, Measure, Learn. Quickly prototype ideas
to see what works and what doesn’t. All while
measuring the outcomes of the projects and
learning while doing.
Data-driven. Impacts would be made by rigorously
analyzing where and under what circumstances
interventions and programs could be delivered
for the greatest possible effect.
Rely heavily on the power of convening,
particularly across disciplines and traditional silos
of operation. By bringing multiple points of view
to bear on these programs, multiple perspectives
could be gathered, which informed and improved
subsequent iterations of the programs.
Replicable. Successes that are achievable in only
one set of economic or physical circumstances
cannot be considered real successes. The IDT
endeavored to develop ideas or concepts that
could be calibrated and deployed in multiple
types of neighborhoods.
Most importantly: rooted in each neighborhood’s
authentic and native assets, sensibilities, and
strengths. In every instance that the IDT was
successful, they were leveraging existing
assets, such as unique architecture, community
associations, or historic attractions, and helping
them achieve higher and better use. Importing
activity and hoping it took root would never be a
recipe for enduring economic sustainability.
The result was a set of programmatic work that
resulted in effective policy changes within local
government.
We were trying to change the tires on a car that we were driving – and driving really fast!
There was always tension between executing on our initiatives as rapidly as we could
while at the same time really thinking about and understanding the underlying factors
of what we were doing. We tried to be focused on outcomes at the same time we were
focused on big-picture, system reform. That tension was difficult, but it was essential.
- Abby Miller
“Though no one way exists to measure neighborhood vitality,
we thought we could look at some key indicators. Within a given
neighborhood, what is the number of new business starts? What are
the gross sales receipts? The occupancy rates of the buildings?”
- Tommy Pacello
The IDT’s place-based approach allowed them to see how their work could affect some of Memphis’ most
common urban topographies: distressed, transitional, and up-trending neighborhoods.
Prototyping solutions and learning lessons from our work in these three types
of neighborhoods meant that this work could, in theory, transfer to other
neighborhoods that showed similar economic, demographic, and
physical characteristics. In all instances, the IDT looked for
neighborhoods that provided both ample room for improvement,
but also contained a sufficient amount of key cultural and material
assets, such as a functioning merchants’ association
and quality building stock.
Soulsville
A distressed community on the city’s south side that
includes some of the highest-poverty residential
ZIP codes in the country, Soulsville is also
home to several prominent tourist
attractions, public schools, and the city’s
only historically-black college, LeMoyne-
Owen College. The area suffers from
high rates of unemployment and an
abundance of vacant and abandoned
property. McLemore Avenue, Walker
Avenue, and Mississippi Boulevard are the
major thoroughfares.
4 programs & policies
7 8

7. madison/cleveland
Anchored by a now thriving theatre/entertainment
district, Overton Square, in the east and a
gradually reviving arts district, Crosstown, in the
west, connected by the major thoroughfares of
Madison Avenue and Cleveland Street, this area
of Midtown Memphis has seen remarkably swift
economic resurgence in the past five years.
binghampton
A northeast Memphis community generally
considered to be one of the city’s most
economically challenged. However, some areas
within this neighborhood, such as the Broad
Avenue Historic District, are rapidly reviving.
The neighborhoods we worked with each had
existing commercial corridors that were in
some state of distress. There was a physical
realm already in place that we could build on
and they also had some sense of a common
culture and collective vision for where they
wanted to go. There was leadership and desire
to help move the neighborhood forward.
- Abby Miller
“Clean it, activate it, sustain it”
became the shorthand to describe the team’s mode of operation. Working backwards
from the desired end-state of economically sustainable, vibrant, prosperous neighborhoods,
the team knew they would have to implement some unorthodox methods to jumpstart the
activation and animation of dormant spaces. Commercial interest, they theorized, would
follow human interest, which itself would only be possible once the public realm itself was
made more inviting through the removal of blight, unwanted graffiti, litter, and other visual
pollutants from the environment.
We spent considerable time talking to businesses so that
we could understand what they really needed. There’s a
misconception that the single biggest barrier to entry for a
new small business is access to capital. In reality, most of the
entrepreneurs we encountered only needed $5,000 - $8,000
to launch their businesses. What they needed more was
guidance and business support services. Dealing with things
like permits, utilities, code enforcement, and so forth was
extremely confusing and intimidating.
- Abby Miller
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
69.6
77 77
96
104.6
113 113 109
90.2
104 104
110
South Memphis Binghampton Madison
5 yr. avg. Target 2014 Proj. YTD YTD
clean
activate
sustain
New Business Licenses as an indicator of new ideas entering the marketplace
9 10
vacancy rates in target areas from june 2012 - june 2014
June, 2012 june, 2014 percent reduced
broad ave.
overton sq./crosstown
walker/mississippi
17 of 37 vacant 3 of 37 vacant 82%
38 of 61 vacant 9 of 61 vacant 76%
9 of 15 vacant 7 of 15 vacant 22%

8. Using this approach, after two and a half years of work with partners in the City and neighborhoods, IDT
developed a series of programs intended to demonstrate their theory of change:
memfix
These urban makeovers sought to render “the art of the possible”
in distressed, blighted, or otherwise underperforming commercial
corridors in IDT target neighborhoods. While each MEMFix was unique
and responsive to the conditions and identity of the neighborhood,
the events frequently included pop-up retail, food trucks, temporary
or semi-permanent redesigns of streets and sidewalks, live music,
film programming, public and performance art, and other activities
intended to make the areas more walkable, active, and engaging.
Result: The IDT designed, organized, and produced MEMFix events in
each of their target neighborhoods; an additional MEMFix event was
staged by a grassroots group in Memphis’ University District. In total, over 20,000 visitors came to these
neighborhoods to explore, shop, and enjoy their unique vibrancy.
In Soulsville, the IDT worked closely with the City of Memphis’ engineers to create “bump-outs” and other
pedestrian-friendly enhancements at the popular intersection of Mississippi Boulevard and Walker Avenue.
City Engineering has adapted this approach and placed similar improvements to streets and thoroughfares
across the city. By slowing traffic, welcoming pedestrians, and reactivating dormant spaces, oft-overlooked
neighborhoods like Soulsville were reintroduced to thousands of Memphians.
One of the surprising efforts to emerge from the IDT’s work was the rise of ioby.org in Memphis. The
website, which stands for “in our backyard,” is a platform for crowdfunding small, resident-led, neighborhood
placemaking projects. Following the program’s launch in May 2014, Memphians used ioby.org to raise more
than $120,000 for 30 projects all over town. The average size of each donation was only $50.
partners
Livable Memphis
City of Memphis
Neighborhood Leaders
Business associations
& civic groups
ioby.org
11 12
The city of Memphis established a MEMFix
Advisory Committee made up of city officials to
assist neighborhoods with future MEMFix projects.
Livable Memphis adopts MEMFix as a program
of its organization and received a grant from
the Environmental Protection Agency to further
develop the program.
MEMFix tested eight new pedestrian and bicycle
improvements and led to permanent street
improvements in South memphis, Highland/
Walker and the Edge neighborhoods.
Attracted ioby.org to Memphis as a platform for
crowdsourcing neighborhood improvements in
Memphis that resulted in 30 fully funded, resident-
led projects and raised more than $120,000 in
citizen philanthropy.
policy & impact

9. memshop
This partnership between the IDT, the City of Memphis, and small
business advisor alt.consulting/Communities Unlimited focused on
compressing the start-up cycle for neighborhood retail. The program
negotiated short-term leases with property owners, small amounts
of seed capital, and provided direct business services to incubate
businesses in vacant commercial spaces.
Result: MEMShop was responsible for the development and launch
of 11 new businesses – five of which are minority-owned and nine of
which are women-owned – creating 30 new jobs. On Broad Avenue,
the program reduced commercial property vacancy rates from more
than 46-percent to less than 5-percent.
Five In One Social Club was one such business. The brick-and-mortar outpost of popular local design and
apparel company VINI, the Social Club is a vibrant retail destination, community learning space, and workshop
for creatives and people who love Memphis. The proprietors had searched the city for appropriate spaces
without success for months, and were considering leaving Memphis altogether before they connected with
the IDT’s MEMShop program. Today, Five and One is a successful, permanent business on Broad Avenue that
is contributing to the revitalization of the corridor.
partners
City of Memphis
alt.consulting/Communities
Unlimited
Neighborhood Leaders
Business Associations
memmobile
The project selected a group
of entrepreneurs to launch
a fleet of five new mobile
businesses. These rolling
retailers were renovated
delivery trucks or other
vehicles large enough to
contain a small store’s worth
of marketable wares. They
could test their new business
models in Memphis through a forgivable loan program that
allowed them to purchase resources, renovate their spaces,
merchandise their products, and market themselves.
Result: Five new businesses were launched, including four apparel
stores and one bicycle repair shop. Three of five businesses
women owned. One of five businesses minority owned.
The Henny Penny Mobile Boutique was the first to launch. A
women’s apparel and accessory store on wheels, the Henny
Penny is the realization of a long-held aspiration by local stylist
Cyndii Jo Hartley. MEMMobile allowed her to invest in her dream
without the onerous risks and burdens of a full-fledged retail
store. The Bikesmith Truck is the vision of local cycling enthusiast
and mechanic Jim Steffens. A mobile business allows him to
position himself at major cycling events and trails where his
customers quite literally come to him. Today, these businesses are
approaching their one year anniversary with growing sales and
market-share.
partners
City of Memphis
alt.consulting/Communities
Unlimited
Memphis Food Truckers
Alliance
= 6businesses launched
on broad ave.
business launched
in crosstown
businesses launched
in south memphis
= 1
= 4
K’Presha Haul of Fashion
Thigh High Jeans
13 14
New permit established for mobile businesses to operate
in city parks
Data collection underway to understand the viability of
mobile retail as a business model
Business support services provided by alt.consulting/
Communities Unlimited to help mobile businesses
policy & impact
Henny Penny Mobile Boutique
The Bikesmith
Proved a model for starting new
neighborhood retail businesses
Adopted as a program of alt.
consulting/Communities Unlimited
Initiated process with Construction
Code Enforcement to facilitate ease
the re-use of historic properties
Funding for continuing program
received through partnership
between the City of Memphis and
the National Endowment for the Arts
policy & impact
Sachë T-shirt Truck

10. partner
Economic Development Growth Engine (EDGE)
Greater Memphis Chamber
Suburban Chamber Alliance
Memphis Shelby Growth Alliance
partner
Economic Development Growth Engine
(EDGE)
Community LIFT
City of Memphis
Inner-City Economic Development (ICED) program
Funded with proceeds from payment-in-lieu-of-taxes (PILOT)
fees, the program provided direct financial assistance to local
small business owners in target neighborhoods. The ICED
program provides forgivable loans for business facade
and interior improvements, streetscape improvements,
signage, marketing support, and consulting work. To date,
seven businesses in Binghampton and South Memphis have
received forgivable facade improvement loans.
Economic Gardening
The backbone of many economic development
programs in cities across the country is a strategy
often referred to as “economic hunting” – the
competitive recruitment of companies to a city
through tax incentives, job training programs,
or infrastructure investments or upgrades. An
emerging complementary strategy is “economic
gardening” – growing small and medium-sized
localbusinessesbyprovidingstrategicconsulting
and building capacity for growth. MIDT partnered
with the Economic Development Growth Engine
to develop an Economic Gardening trial program
for 47 stage-two companies (companies between
$700 million and $50 million in gross revenue and/
or 10 – 100 employees) in Memphis and Shelby
County. Each company entering the Economic
Gardening program received up to 36 hours of
targeted consulting services to help them develop
a strategic growth plan and connect them with
available resources.
Result: Forty-seven midsize businesses participated
in the pilot economic gardening program. Among
them was Medford Roofing and Construction,
whose CEO Meghan Medford found the program
indispensible. “I was combing through the internet
trying to figure out if I was headed in the right
direction with my business,” Meghan said when
asked to evaluate the program’s impact. “I was
nervous and stressed before the engagement with
the Economic Gardening team, but now I have
a plan. Strategic research specialists answered
every question I had about my business and
I now have the confidence to make decisions
moving forward. This was invaluable insight and
information I couldn’t afford otherwise – in money
or time.”
15 16
ICED Program resolution passed through City
Council and program adopted by EDGE.
To date the program has approved seven small
($25,000 or less) forgivable loans for local
businesses to improve facades and building
interiors.
policy & impact
After
Before
Trained and certified two Economic Gardening
Program Administrators
Developed and tested an Economic
Gardening as a program supporting 47
local small businesses
90 percent of program graduates endorsed the
program for other stage-two companies
Economic Gardening adopted by EDGE as
a program provided to locally owned stage-
two companies
policy & impact
In the spectrum of business service providers,
second-stage companies lacked sufficient resources
to reach the next level in building business. In
Shelby County, second – stage companies comprise
37-percent of job growth, which means that there
was an opportunity to increase that number
strategically. The National Center for Economic
Gardening has been able to virtually provide
intelligence to companies that admit that they
would not have known about or been able to afford
the level of service they have received. We have 29
graduates from the program and 7 jobs created as a
result of recommendations to date.
- Dorian Spears

11. It was a six-week temporary activation project, held
from late April through late May, inside a historic,
19th-century brewery that had been
abandoned since the mid-1950s.
Untapped included a café serving
locally-sourced beverages, food
trucks, mobile retail, live music,
movie screenings, workshops,
and other kinds of do-it-yourself,
spontaneous programming.
More than 20,000 people from all
over the world attended Untapped
during its six-week run. Support
for the event well exceeded the number of visitors,
however. Two professors from Rhodes College were
intrigued by the community reaction and designed
a survey to investigate public opinion and potential
uses for the building; the survey was shared
prolifically over social media and garnered more
than 800 responses. An independently produced
video detailing the event got more
than 4,000 views. The initial $20,000
put into Untapped yielded gross
revenues of more than $350,000,
and providing the building could
return to a profitable use. National
attention for Untapped spread via
an Associated Press story about the
event that was picked up by outlets
across the country.
The Tennessee Brewery Untapped project was a high-profile
demonstration of many of the team’s activation strategies
implemented at one time and place.
Scenes from Brewery Untapped
17 18
Successfully applied elements of several
IDT initiatives including MEMFix, MEMShop,
Neighborhood Retail Strategy, and Blight
Strategy
Highlighted the unrealized value of the historic
TN Brewery to more than 20,000 people.
Proved a profitable re-use of the space
demonstrating a new model for historic
preservation and revitalizing difficult spaces
Helped to save the building from demolition
preserving it as a neighborhood and city asset
impact
“Following this summer’s successful
month-long Tennessee Brewery Untapped
event, which activated the long-vacant
space with a beer garden, music, food
trucks and other activities, [local
developer Billy] Orgel and his partners
in August entered into a contract to buy
the property … The Untapped event and
subsequent acquisition likely saved the
historic structure, which dates back to
1890, from the wrecking ball.”
- Memphis Daily News,
November 11, 2014
partners
doug carpenter & associates
Truck Stop
Colliers
Memphis Regional Design
Center
Memphis Botanic Gardens
Photography courtesy of Traci Brothers McDoniel

12. 5
started
15 new
businesses
5 of
15minority-owned
9 of
15woman-owned
30 new jobs were created
neighborhood economic vitality
by the numbers
directly generated
$428,000
in local philanthropic & corporate
gifts & grants for NEV
partnered with city agencies
to coordinate another
$500,000+
of inner-city economic
development funds
$120,758
in citizen philanthropy
raised through ioby.org
to fund 30 community
led neighborhood
change proejcts
17.7% spending on minority-owned firms / 15.3% spending on woman-owned firms
spending
28.4% spending on minority-owned firms / 25.5% spending on woman-owned firms
Team spending
Local governments are still essentially following the same models and systems that were
developed when their cities were founded. That means local governments are essentially
18th-century tools that are trying to help 21st-century problems.
- Abby Miller
19 20
pr o t o t y ped
8 pedestrian
& bicycle
infrastructure
projects
27shopfronts
activated through
memfix & memshop
1 parking lot
turned into a seasonal night market
7 shopfront
facade improvement
forgivable loans approved
prepared facade improvement
strategy for
9 shopfronts
trained more than
60 neighborhood
leaders
on crowd-sourcing
through ioby.org
6 retail & grocery market
studies prepared
assisted urban farm in south memphis
to expand to 8 previously blighted properties

13. Seven key lessons emerged from the team’s work
over the course of two years:
1. Cities and the neighborhoods that comprise
them are complex places. While they are capable
of rapid progress, there are no short cuts or magic
bullets to addressing the challenges they face. No
one single investment or project will be the key
to revitalization.
2. Local government systems are not typically
oriented to deliver the kind of granular, nuanced
help that neighborhoods frequently need. For
decades, the most efficient way for municipal
governments to operate was to apply the same
techniques to all parts of the city at once.
As a result, one-size-fits-all approaches to
everything from blight reduction to economic
development have become status quo. IDT
helped local government begin to carve out
additional capacity to focus on the fine grained
neighborhood level.
3. Many small projects can accumulate to produce
big, lasting changes. Just as cities can be the most
agile and responsive elements of metropolitan
regions, neighborhoods can be the most agile and
responsive units of cities. The way that citizens want
to develop their neighborhoods, blocks, and even
individual parcels offers a wealth of information for
cities that are willing to listen and learn.
4. In a post-recessionary, 21st-century economy, it
is important to focus some of our resources on:
• Low-risk projects that indicate strong
potential for positive returns.
• Testing ideas to discern neighborhood
capacity for more permanent and costly
capital investment.
5. Placemaking must be a part of a city’s
economic development strategy. People will not
gather, linger, and spend money in places that
are not inviting, interesting, and safe. Pedestrian
traffic, public safety, and civic cleanliness all
support and reinforce each other.
6. Many cities lack systems to adequately and
accurately measure the return on larger scale
investments.
7. Cities don’t always understand the extent of
their long-term maintenance liabilities for their
investments or infrastructure acquired through
annexation.
Innovation within our institutions is crucial.
As the IDT concludes their work with NEV,
the evidence is everywhere: more than two
dozen projects all over Memphis are currently
being hosted on ioby.org; MEMFix projects are
being planned in more historic neighborhoods
throughout the city’s urban core; local
government has an attitude of curiosity,
assistance, and open-mindedness when it
comes to supporting grassroots neighborhood
revitalization efforts.
An agile local government is
one that understands that each
neighborhood – each block –
contains a unique set of challenges
and assets. Innovation does not
mean that one solution fits all
circumstances. The initiatives we
launched have to adapt and evolve if
they’re going to sustain; they can’t
just be duplicated.
- Abby Miller
Our achievement was in helping people in
neighborhoods understand that they can
stop waiting on government. They have to
stop waiting on government. Take a look
around, be aware of the resources in your
neighborhood, and get to work.
- Doug McGowen
6 lessons learned
21 22

14. MEMFIX
7 next steps
But what about the remainder of the team’s work?
Without question, a lot remains to be done. Many
Memphis neighborhoods still need to be “fixed”
and many commercial corridors are still lacking in
desirable amounts of daily vibrancy and traffic.
However, the power of the team to start new
conversations, realign civic priorities, and prove
new approaches is already evident in many ways:
• The IDT has recently started working with issues
related to customer service and performance
management. The public and private sectors have
stepped up to help the City of Memphis retain
innovation capacity through project-specific grants
as well as $200,000 in the Grants and Agencies
section earmarked for the Innovation Delivery
Team. Combined with an approved extension of
over $500,000 of unexpended Bloomberg grant
funds, these funds will sustain innovation delivery
team operations through FY15.
• The IDT will move forward in its work to improve
a culture of excellence in government rooted in a
renewed focus on customer service, in addition
to one or two new challenges aligned with the
priorities of the Mayor and Memphis City Council.
• Impressed by the achievements of Memphis
and the other cities in their cohort, Bloomberg
Philanthropies chose to invest another $45 million
into creating a new cohort of innovation delivery
teams that will use data-driven, results-oriented
approaches to solve vexing urban problems.
“The nature of innovation is that it
contains the inherent risk of failure. Each
initiative that we tried didn’t succeed
or meet our predictions in the way we
expected. But for us, success can be
measured by asking these questions:
did we increase capacity for people in
neighborhoods to do more things on
their own? Did our approach and way of
thinking inspire them? Did it empower
them? Did we reorient local government
to be more nimble, more agile, and more
helpful to small businesses, entrepreneurs,
and neighborhoods? Did we find partner
organizations willing to adapt our work
and continue it? In the majority of cases,
the answer to those questions is YES.”
- Abby Miller
23 24Photography courtesy of Traci Brothers McDoniel

15. Innovat eMemphis.com