SubscribePaper 18: Balancing Regional and State Innovation Needs
How do you think about innovation in tough economic times? During its meeting in Williamston last Thursday, the North Carolina Innovation Council got a look at the two very different ways it will need to answer that question: one could be called the regional challenge (with micro answers), with the other being the statewide challenge (macro answers).
The Regional Challenge
Here, the Council needs to come up with “micro” oriented answers: how can innovation work in the vastly-different eco-systems the various people of our state live in? At the Williamston meeting, the Council heard how leaders in northeastern NC are thinking about the “innovation imperative.”
The region is well below the state average in per capita income and education levels, and in some ways is more oriented toward Norfolk/Virginia Beach than to North Carolina. Leaders there say they have three big assets – proximity to the huge Norfolk market, available land (including lots of coastline) and a hard working people.
Some good politicking and strategic investment have helped northeastern NC strengthen its backbone of high speed fiber and improve its road systems, so it is more connected than ever to the rest of the world. The region’s rich cultural history has enabled it to improve its “heritage” tourism offerings.
But the big employment industries that have supported the Northeast for years – apparel, agriculture, timber, food processing – are all facing huge long-term challenges, and some other cyclical industries like tourism and boat building are facing gigantic short-term challenges. It adds up to high unemployment in some places (Halifax is sitting at 13.6% unemployment; ten other counties in the region are above 10%) and a real innovation imperative.
The Northeast’s approach is to make a few “big bets” – high profile efforts that build off assets and could yield fruit that supports the region for a long time to come. The NC Center for Automotive Research along the I-95 corridor in Northampton County takes advantage of its space to create an automotive testing track. A bio-ag initiative aims to develop the region’s ability not just to grow crops, but to extract important chemicals from those crops. An aviation and aerospace initiative aims to make the Pasquotank County area a key source of aircraft overhaul.
Even if every initiative works, it’s hard to see how they will create enough jobs to replace those in the high-employment sectors the region is losing. An innovation strategy for North Carolina needs to offer hope and tangible ideas to regions like the Northeast, but also to challenge those regions to think bigger themselves.
The Council needs to create structures or encourage thinking that permits serious innovation, the kind that comes from asking big questions and questioning fundamental assumptions. This thinking shouldn’t be wholly dependent on large transfers of funds from one part of the state to another.
For example, is there a new breed of tree that is more profitable per acre than the existing stock?
What’s the full range of niche crops that farmers might turn to to increase profits per acre?
How could the Northeast become the go-to testing ground for new ideas and companies?
What policy changes could it make to effectively blow up the state line to become an even bigger part of the exploding Norfolk market? How could northeastern innovators “play bigger” by connecting to innovative activities in that huge metro region?
What radical approaches to K-12 education can school systems there make to raise up a complete generation of innovative entrepreneurs who want to grow and plant permanent roots in a vibrant new northeast?
How can the region draw on Outer and Inner Banks visitors and retirees to extract their ideas and commitment to rethinking the region?
Which programs or research projects from which colleges or universities could be brought in to experiment with new models and ideas?
Can local government leaders come up with a new finance model that brings them the income they need to create their visions of tomorrow?
How can companies take full advantage of the even-greater connectivity offered by broadband expansion coming to the region, and the cost savings that come through greater access to “cloud” computing, to take their innovation to a new level?
No innovation council is going to be as clever at developing solutions like that as the people of a region are, but an innovation council can look at how to give regions space to dream and dare and do.
The Statewide Challenge
The other kind of answers the Council needs to develop are “macro” ones: what policy tweaks and development strategies and big ideas should the Council recommend to the state as a whole? At its meeting Thursday, the Council organized into three committees:
1) Talent Growth, Retention and Recruitment – How do we raise up more people whose instinct it is to innovate, not immolate or enervate? Once we graduate innovative people from our schools, how do we get them to stay and innovate instate. Is it by starting new companies or developing new models, by expanding existing product lines or services, or by rejiggering existing companies? And how do we convince innovative people that this is the best place in the world to move to or move back to?
2) Growing Innovative Companies and Organizations – What tools and conditions are necessary to increase the birth and growth rate of our most innovative companies? What financial tools or policy conditions or technical assistance strategies do we need to create a state known for its relentless innovation?
3) Attracting Innovative Companies and Organizations – In a state accustomed to recruiting “buffaloes” – the kind of high employment branch plants of old-style, mainline industries that “fed” us in the 20th century — can we find a way to systematically identify and recruit “gazelles” – small, fast growing, innovative companies that will feed us in the 21st century?
The three committees will likely evolve over time and may adjust their focus, but in the meantime they need to work quickly to determine if there are any recommendations that could meaningfully help the state while we are in the middle of this economic crisis. In the meantime, the Council will continue meeting monthly across the state – balancing macro and micro solutions that can help us begin to make progress in creating an innovation culture here.
What would your suggestions be for the work of these three committees? What ideas need to be on the table for them if we want to strengthen the culture of innovation in our state? And how does a region launch innovation? Send us your thoughts, comments, corrections, analysis as a comment below, or Email or twitter us.
Les
There are a number of macro conditions that may require overall rethinking, and this applies, regionally, Statewide and Nationally. First is population growth. How are all these people going to find useful work or create companies. Second, new inventions generally reduce labor needs. Consider what email has done to the Post Office. So the equation is More people + Labor reducing technology = A shorter working week. Most people saw no benefit from technological advances in their jobs during the latter part of the 20th Century. When PC word processors came in administration assistants should have been reduced to 4 days with the same pay. After all they are paid to do a job not just show up. That requires a completely new way of thinking we should be aiming for people to do what took 5 days in 3 days, for the same compensation. In that way people can spend time developing themselves. Until most people are freed from 5 day a week, 2 weeks holidays a year corporate bondage, there will be a survival mentality not an innovation one. Another benefit will be it will allow the increased population to be gainfully employed. If you were working 3 days a week you could start your own
company, someone else could work two days and start their company, or learn the violin, a foreign language, write a book, teach at a school. We need a new civil rights campaign for a 3 day working week.
Peter: These are really interesting observations. Have two quick thoughts and a question for you and others:
1) As you and others have noted earlier, some of our top companies are already doing this — for example the explicit permission Google and to some extent Cisco and other companies are giving employees to spend a percentage of their time working on side projects. It’s not exactly a 3 day work week, but it is a recognition by those companies that there is value in giving highly productive, inventive people a little space to innovate.
2. On a university level the form it might take is allowing certain faculty course release time to move a company forward or move a rough technology closer to a commercializable level. That requires some new thinking, new models.
The other question you raise is a really thorny one. Are there any decent-paying, labor-intensive jobs left in the world. In NC, we used to have textiles, apparel, furniture, various forms of farming. Now every one of those sectors is radically smaller. Is there any labor-intensive job left in an innovation-based econmy?
Les
The first point has many facets, I come from the media. When I started in media I trained myself on every linear editing console, switcher, special effects device and title generator. Within 10 years it was all was obsolete, non linear digital editing appeared. Gone was Abekas A53 A52, Kaleidscopes, ADOs, Grass Valley Switchers and Controllers etc, literally hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment outdated. So was my knowledge, it was worthless as a technical matter not a creative one. The same may soon become true for the PC as we know it. We have to face the fact that many types (not all)work knowledge is transient. Cisco and Google by doing this are doing their employees a great favor. It is time to recognize that many industries should be doing this too. A 3 or 4 day week with a living wage is one way to go.
As to the second point, because of robotics there will never be large industrial plants like the Henry Ford factories turning out the Model T. There never will be furniture, textile factories like in the past low wage countries will take the work. There are labor intensive industries in the service sector, health care, tourism, entertainment, construction etc. But there is something else bubbling up, there are specialty industries and barter. Here in Chapel Hill and the surrounding areas, Organic Farming has taken root. It works this way, customers pay ahead of time for a monthly box of vegetables and dairy products. Not only are they better tasting, but economically the farmer has stability, a guaranteed income. In hand with this are barter communities, lets say you need a room drywalled. Well 2 friends come over and do it, one puts up the drywall the other the mud and paint. In return that person who is say a graphics person makes business card or designs their letterhead. No money changes hands. These are moneyless economies, partly driven by the distorted financial situation (which needs radical adjustment, that is another issue) I can see how Car Dealers would make a deal with a Production company to make a video in exchange for a set amount of service. In other words one can underwrite ones living costs, or build a business through barter. These are labor and time intensive, but not financially onerous.