When you are charged with leading Ohio’s job creation efforts, it pays to be able to multi-task.

As he demonstrated during an Oct. 4 luncheon with local business leaders and economic development officials, multi-tasking is a skill JobsOhio chief Mark Kvamme has mastered to a tee.

Sneaking in a bite of his meal here and there, Kvamme engaged in a lively exchange with local civic leaders involved in economic development activities.

As Kvamme listened to local job creation success stories and shared information the newly created JobsOhio, his cell phone rang.

When he saw who was on the line, he instantly answered the phone.

It was Gov. John Kasich.

Issuing a quick apology, Kvamme quickly slipped out of the room to take the call.

When returned minutes later, Kvamme explained that those present at the meeting had just witnessed what it was like to be a member of Kasich’s cabinet.

“We have a rule, like you just saw, that if we’ve got to do something about economic development, we can call anybody out of a meeting,” said Kvamme.

Kasich, who was in a meeting in Akron and trying to quickly solve a problem, invoked the rule and reached out to Kvamme for a solution.

That nimbleness is also reflected in the establishment of JobsOhio.

Under the old system, Kvamme explained, “You were basically forced to move at the speed of the statute versus the speed of the market.”

No longer bogged down with the wide variety of programs housed in the Department of Development, the privately financed organization is now able to focus its attention solely on economic development.

That laser focus allows JobsOhio to capitalize on Ohio’s strengths to create jobs.

According to Kvamme, agriculture is one of those strengths and Wayne County plays a critical role in advancing “an important part of the Ohio economy.”

After touring BioHio and OARDC earlier in the day and learning more about quasar’s work on generating power from agricultural waste and OARDC’s research on using materials extracted from Russian Dandelions to produce natural rubber and bio-based materials to create foam for automobile parts, Kvamme sees the work being done in Wooster as a natural extension of Wayne County’s agricultural base.

“What I see here is the meeting of agriculture and technology,” said Kvamme.

“We really believe that we have some phenomenal capabilities in our universities, like here,” said Kvamme.

“There is some really good stuff, but we need to be able to commercialize it,” said Kvamme.

In addition to universities developing a methodology to commercialize their discoveries, like the one established at Ohio State, “the other thing is you have to have access to capital because these companies don’t spin out unless you have access to capital and we’re working on that,” said Kvamme.

Kvamme noted that the establishment of JobsOhio marks a significant departure from the way the Department of Development conducted economic development activities.

“Before it was very centralized in Columbus and we feel we needed to get that out” on a more regional basis, said Kvamme.

“What we’ve done working with the six regional development organizations is to not only give them the responsibility to work with local economic development officials… but also the authority to give them the tools to actually do deals,” such as the availability of job creation tax credits and grants, said Kvamme.

A team of individuals with expertise in everything from banking and energy to consumer goods and logistics is being assembled to act as a resource to the regional economic development organizations.

“It’s all about getting the job done because we don’t have time to waste,” said Kvamme.