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Old
friend Jim Clinton has done it again. Clinton is
executive director of the Southern Growth Policies
Board (SGPB) in Research Triangle Park, N.C.
Armed with a new report, “Innovation with a
Southern Accent,” he’s just led his members
through an economic development revival meeting in
New Orleans. Clinton’s report challenges anew both
Southern states and Southerners with a measured, but
crisp view of the knowledge-driven future.
Some
of the challenge is captured in Clinton’s blunt
talk, such as the question “Do we celebrate
ignorance or do we celebrate knowledge?” Some is
combined with the clever story-telling abilities
many Southerners share, such as Clinton dedicating
the board’s report to the day when comedian Jeff
Foxworthy has to say something like, “You might be
a redneck, if you just hotwired your Blackberry to
receive podcasts of NASCAR races.”
What
the SGPB has packaged for review at its website
is an executive summary of conclusions from the
4,000 Southerners it met, surveyed, analyzed or
convened over the last year. The board’s report
found some anxiety, even fear among Southern
political leaders, educators, business executives
and economic development professionals about
accelerating global competitiveness and the speed
with which Southern states are responding. It cites
a 2006 Business Week survey of 1,000 global
executives who listed among the shortcomings of
doing business in the South the long development
cycles of state economic development operations, the
lack of coordination among jurisdictions and states
and a culture that remains risk-adverse. That dog,
ignorance, just won’t hunt.
Those
who participated in the board’s deliberations also
found a broad desire to change for the better – to
strengthen math and science education, to increase
awareness of technology career options, including
entrepreneurship, to create a culture of innovation
and learning and to spread broadband access and
computer literacy everywhere. The only question is
why not leap to an even more forward-looking term,
such as “communications fluency,” that also
includes podcasts, text messages and
transponders?
Here’s another one for
Foxworthy from the report. You might be a redneck,
if you invented a sugar-free gum that tastes like
Skoal.
These broad goals, of course, are not a
secret. The Commonwealth has discussed these matters
for the better part of a decade as it has helped
build Virginia’s robust technology and innovation
networks. Those networks include 10,000+ technology
companies, 10 regional technology councils, rapidly
expanding research universities, federal research
agencies and labs, the Center for Innovative
Technology, the Virginia Research and Technology
Advisory Commission, the General Assembly’s Joint
Commission on Technology and Science, Virginia’s
current and last three governors and four
Secretaries of Technology since 1998.
But what Clinton and his colleagues at the Southern
Growth Policies Board, including Virginia state
Senator Charles Hawkins of Chatham, who now serves
as his vice chairman, have done is put their fingers
directly on what it takes to succeed. Virginia, as
is the case with other Southern states, needs to
complete a cultural shift towards “valuing and
celebrating knowledge, knowledgeable people,
knowledgeable businesses and knowledgeable
institutions.” This shift has transformed Northern
Virginia, but only pieces of communities in other
parts of Virginia. States also need a “civic and
political commitment to change” and some sense of
urgency to do so.
As has been discussed
in Bacons Rebellion many times in the past, that
change includes not just boosting and leveraging the
federal research and development at which Virginia
excels or the university R&D that is growing. It
requires incentives and encouragement to grow
industry R&D rapidly. The potential return on
R&D investment turns out to be huge. According
to the National Institute on Standards and
Technology (NIST), “the rate of return to basic
science is about three times that for applied
R&D, which, in turn, has twice the return on
physical capital.”
Change includes
improving teacher quality in math and science
education, but also active marketing of math,
science and technology careers and recruiting
world-class talent from around the world (to
communities that are not seen as parochial or
xenophobic). And the different future requires more
venture and related funding capacity, more
entrepreneurs and more innovative ways to leverage
university, lab and private sector technology
assets. If you can’t risk with the big venture
capitalists, stay on the porch.
Clinton
calls it the “V strategy,” a new approach that
packages value, volume and velocity of new knowledge
and applied knowledge to speed products and
processes to the marketplace. Economic vitality, the
report concludes, ultimately is about helping the
private sector succeed. If your mind jumps quickly
to math and science abbreviations represented by the
letter “V” -- vacuum, valine, vanadium, vector,
vein, virus, visibility, voltage and vibrational
quantum -- you’re already down the innovation road
a ways.
And, yes, the report does
suggest one more Foxworthy comment on innovative
Southerners. You might be a redneck, if you hold six
or more patents and each used the term “hunting
dog” in its disclosure documents.
--
June 12, 2006
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