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

In previous posts we looked at how government needs to adapt (see Papers 8, 9 and 10) and how businesses need to do a better job of integrating design thinking into their business planning and operations (see Papers 6 and 7). In this guest post, NC DOT Deputy Secretary for Communication Ted Vaden makes some observations of relevance to both government agencies and businesses based on what he heard at last month’s Emerging Issues Forum on creativity.

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 [...]

Google’s announcement that the company is considering providing somewhere between 50,000 and 500,000 people across the United States broadband Internet access with a speed of a gigabit per second starting (maybe) later this year. It’s a reminder of the arms race going on with broadband speed.
If the “giga” prefix sends you to Wikipedia or your [...]

In this interview, Anita Brown-Graham, director of the Institute for Emerging Issues, explains the importance of creativity to innovation and North Carolina.

My 9-year-old son nearly caused a single car accident last week. On the way to a basketball game, he asked the question every Psych-English major parent dreads: “How does chemistry work, Dad?” As someone who hangs out with scientists sometimes during the day, I felt the pressure: I had to get this one right.  My [...]

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 [...]

The January 14 first meeting of the Governor’s Innovation Council showed the promise and the challenge of such councils.
On the one hand, there was a good chunk of energy in the room as a mix of big and small businessmen and women, elected officials, government types, higher ed folks, venture capitalists, nonprofit leaders and others [...]

This Thursday the Governor’s Innovation Council will kick off what appears to be a couple of year’s worth of meetings, 9:00 am- 12:30 pm at the NC Museum of Natural Science in downtown Raleigh.
The Council, co-chaired by Steve Nelson of the Wakefield Group and Al Delia, the Governor’s Senior Policy Advisor, looks to have 30 [...]

‘Tis the season – for resolutions. We love to make em; we tend to break ‘em. But what if people got a gift to help them keep their resolution? We’ve arranged ten gifts with ten key NC innovation players for 2010 in mix ‘n match format.

The efforts of other states confirm what we already knew. To grow more innovative companies that create more and better jobs, North Carolina will have to address some of our capital gaps.