The Milwaukee region, once known as the “machine shop to the world,” must remake itself as the industrial “design shop of the world” if it is to compete in a landscape transformed by global economic forces, civic leaders said Wednesday in unveiling the Milwaukee 7s strategic economic plan.
The report by the seven-county economic development group said southeastern Wisconsins future hinges on its engineering talent, research-and-development capacity, its universities and its collective impulse to generate products and ideas.