Change Papers: A shared effort to change North Carolina's climate for innovation.

Ouch. North Carolina has just blown through a couple of Maginot lines we really didn’t want to cross. We’ve just crossed the 500,000 unemployed mark — a half million people who want work can’t find it. And unemployment jumped north of 11% on Friday — to a 30-year high.

With more than 90% of our jobs coming from small businesses and startups, we know that the solution to our short and long-term problems lies in the hands of the people who can create and grow those businesses. And we know that the companies most likely to grow fastest are those that are truly innovative, that offer a new idea, a new widget, a new service that people want and need and will pay money for. The answer to our needs in the mid- and long-term must be a new innovation-driven economy.

But what does that look like and what can we do in the short term to make that happen?

A starter set of ideas comes from this Sunday’s column by uber-columnist Thomas Friedman in the New York Times. Friedman calls on President Obama to “launch his own moon shot…to make 2010…the year of innovation…the year of ‘Start-Up America,’” and not just for geeks or geniuses, but for millions of kids.

Why? “Without inventing more new products and services that make people more productive, healthier or entertained – that we can sell around the world – we’ll never be able to afford the health care our people need, let alone pay off our debts,” says Friedman.

How might this grassroots movement toward innovation get started? Friedman connects three dots, one focusing on fostering inventiveness and the other two looking at how to turn innovative ideas into innovative companies: 1) National Lab Day, an effort calling for practicing scientists and classroom teachers to work together on exciting science projects the first week of May to inspire K-12 students in science; 2) the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship, which advocates for teaching of entrepreneurship in middle and high school classrooms, with a special emphasis on low-income areas; and 3) a film called “Ten9Eight” profiling students participating in the NFTE annual entrepreneurship competition  (see trailer here).

There’s no question the Obama administration is upping the emphasis on innovation (see Paper 04). There have been dramatic new investments in the past year in science and technology research that could defibrilate a good bit of our inno-sclerosis over time. And I joined a small group of people meeting with a US Department of Commerce official who’ll be leading the USDOC’s first-ever office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship to hear about what plans for that office are starting to sound like and how we in NC can connect to them.

But the truth is we in North Carolina can’t afford to wait for trickle down innovation. So why don’t we start to work right now on a couple of Friedman’s ideas?

1. Let’s all commit to call our nearest school principal and ask what their plans are for National Lab Day. If they don’t have any, ask why. And if they don’t know how to get started, call your nearest university (you can start with the folks at these numbers on the UNC Economic Transformation Council) and ask how you could connect their scientists to your schools.
2. Let’s organize a movement to order copies of the DVD of the new film “Ten9Eight” to be shown in middle school classrooms across the state, or ask our students to tune in to the broadcast showing of the film on Super Bowl Sunday, February 7 at noon on BET, and then work to create the best participation ever in our annual “Hop on the Bus” high school entrepreneurship competition (this year’s competition is already down to finalists, to be announced this spring)

The combination of the two ideas – a lot more young people interested in scientific discovery and a lot more young people thinking about how to turn innovative ideas into companies – doesn’t address the entire spectrum of “innovation.” But wouldn’t it be a great kick start to our own “moon launch” of innovation?