Every city has added “inclusive innovation” to the initiatives that will shape its economic destiny. These initiatives are intended to meaningfully engage those left behind in the industries of the future.Most cities have delivered the obligatory white paper on how they’re going to realize this vision.D.C. Philly, Pittsburgh and soon Baltimore, will have all gone through this stage. But it’s after issuing the white paper that the challenge becomes real, and the hard work begins. What’s valuable to cities on this journey is understanding how others are actually turning their vision for inclusive innovation into reality. As the “innovation” part of any city’s plan gains steam, the real question is how to ensure the “inclusion” part doesn’t struggle in its wake.

Our neighbors in D.C. Philly and Pittsburgh have demonstrated the steps necessary to make their inclusion roadmap come to life for their citizens. The first step is to measure what matters in driving inclusion –figuring out what factors shape an equitable and inclusive innovation community. This isn’t as easy as it might sound; it requires listening past the usual suspects and groups, and digging hard to find objective measures for these factors. It also requires being honest about which innovation clusters are possible in their community and which ones are pipe dreams. The second step is to be frank about the results – sharing the reality of where the divide lies as granularly as possible. Both D.C., as discussed in my last column, and Pittsburgh, in its white paper, were serious about understanding their dividing lines. Every step these cities now take along their roadmap will be compared to where they started and where they need to go. There are mechanics in place to measure success objectively. And any changes to the rules of the road or to how its mileposts are calibrated are apparent as well, open to accountability, debate and refinement.

The third step is to design a process to measure, track and share which initiatives are working and which aren’t. Pittsburgh has taken the interesting step of building as part of their strategy an inclusive innovationportal,a way to track the impact of their efforts across all initiatives for everyone to see, comment on, and become engaged. Not only did Pittsburgh shoot straight on where the city stood at the start of this initiative; it’s remaining transparent on what’s working and what isn’t, as efforts progress. They’re not shying away from revealing some of the more intractable challenges, particularly digital divide issues, and the result of such transparency and accountability may very well be greater community engagement.

Pittsburgh’s web portal is truly a window into how the community is transforming itself. Their inclusive innovation meetups have taken on a life of their own, connecting new groups as they move meetups around the city. Pittsburgh’s inclusive innovation week, has moved past story-telling, to refining and driving the city’s inclusive innovation strategy. There’s much more going on than these few examples suggest; one just has to look through this window. One of the more telling aspects of Pittsburgh’s inclusion strategy is it feel of being community driven, that connections are being made between organizations and initiatives. There is a sense of fewer silos. There’s clearly an effort to bring emerging groups into the mix, to celebrate and support initiatives that sprout organically. And most interesting for other cities, Pittsburgh’s foundation community has gotten behind the hard work of building this portal and of measuring inclusion initiatives. The view through Pittsburgh’s window shows promise, momentum and engagement;the groups one sees feel connected to each other, they look busy,appear to be doing cool work. It’s a view I suspect other cities will come to envy as they struggle with their own inclusion strategies.

With more than 30 years’ experience in law and business, Newt Fowler, a partner in Womble Bond Dickinson’s business practice, advises many investors, entrepreneurs and technology companies, guiding them through all aspects of business planning, financing transactions, technology commercialization and M&A. He’s the pastboard chair of TEDCO and serves on the Board of the Economic Alliance of Greater Baltimore. Newt can be reached at newt.fowler@wbd-us.com.