Regional Centers of Innovation 101
Tilling the Soil for Healthy Innovation Supports Economic Growth
SOURCE: Eeboo Corporation/Illustration-Dante Yaccarino; Design-Brenda Brown Fortunato
Regional centers such as Silicon Valley and Boston cultivate technology-based economic development through a dynamic mix of researchers, entrepreneurs, investors, and infrastructure. Drawing lessons from their success can help revitalize the U.S. economy.
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See also: The Geography of Innovation: The Federal Government and the Growth of Regional Innovation Clusters By Jonathan Sallet, Ed Paisley, and Justin R. Masterman
Innovation Clusters (full archive of innovation clusters work on Science Progress)
Science Progress Editorial Director Ed Paisley provides a brief overview in this Ask the Expert video:
What are regional centers of innovation?
A regional center of innovation is a geographic area that supports technology-based economic development through a dynamic mix of researchers, entrepreneurs, investors, and infrastructure, with support from universities and local, state, and federal government policies.
In the United States, the two best examples are Silicon Valley, the hotbed of computer technology in northern California, and the metropolitan Boston area connected by Route 128, which is a nexus of biotechnology research and development. Each is centered around key research institutes: Stanford University in California and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Massachusetts. Both areas excel because they are regions where exciting work happens and where high-tech workers socialize, sparking unexpected and unexplored ideas. Innovation springs from these interactions as individuals connect with capital, business and marketing talent, and ideas evolve into successful products, services and businesses.
Prosperous regional centers provide dividends to the domestic and world economies—advanced IT in the case of Silicon Valley and life-saving medical advances in the case of Boston. They also benefit local communities by attracting a talented and high-paid workforce, cultural organizations, and start-up businesses that generate tax revenue and support the cycle of growth.
What factors encourage the formation of a regional center?
Because economic growth is complex, local, and ultimately beyond anyone’s control, there is no one-size-fits-all formula for creating a regional center. Many areas have failed despite valiant efforts. But examining those that have succeeded reveals a set of principles that provide a framework for what works and what doesn’t. To paraphrase the innovation experts writing in Science Progress: policymakers can’t always predict how regional factors will contribute to innovation, but they can till the soil that will allow them to flourish. At the state level, these elements are key:
Comparative Advantages
Regions must identify advantages in science, technology, and innovation that sustain and drive a state economy. These can include life sciences, information technology, manufacturing, or agriculture. A regional center takes advantage of existing resources and talent.
Capital
Groups aiming to cultivate a regional center must find the sources of seed capital and venture capital needed to invest in research, business incubation, and people.
Networking: Capital and Ideas
Policymakers, entrepreneurs, and researchers must work to align research interests in the region with opportunities for commercialization—the complex process of turning new discoveries into marketable products—that will spark investor interest. This requires utilizing sources of innovation that include universities, entrepreneurs, and dormant intellectual property housed in private industry. In some instances, this necessitates importing innovation from outside the region.
Networking: People with Capital and Ideas
Innovation policy should attract the best researchers to develop regional centers of excellence. To complement research capabilities, it’s also necessary to attract industry-specific business talent to provide key commercialization skills, access to venture capital investment, and mergers-and-acquisitions experience.
Space
Innovators and entrepreneurs need space to do high-quality work. Development groups, often working with local universities, must provide the physical space necessary for innovation and commercialization to thrive. This involves creating the best research space to draw the best talent and building cost-effective incubation space and services. Quality housing, transport facilities and schools will also help attract the best people to the region.
How can regional centers support economic recovery and growth?
The United States, now ranks seventh among the 30 most developed countries in the amount of gross domestic product devoted to research and development, falling most recently behind Japan and South Korea.
The main reason: Since the late 1960s federal government spending on research and development has declined as a share of both total R&D spending and GDP. This has contributed to an alarming decline in the number of researchers as a proportion of the labor force. Boosting government funding of basic R&D in a number of economically innovative ways must be part of the new administration’s economic stimulus program.
Science Progress Advisory Board member Thomas Kalil, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, outlined a variety of ways in which the federal government can work with universities and state and local governments to foster regional centers of innovation in his report, “A National Innovation Agenda: Progressive Policies for Economic Growth and Opportunity Through Science and Innovation.” And Rob Atkinson, a member of Science Progress’ Taskforce on Regional Centers of Innovation and president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, presents his proposal for a National Innovation Foundation as one fruitful approach to distributing these funds in the latest edition of Science Progress.
A long-term sustainable increase in U.S. economic growth depends upon a continual stream of new ideas, products, and processes. It is these innovations that will fuel improvements in productivity across the entire economy and raise living standards for all.
To learn more, read the reports from the Taskforce on Regional Centers of Innovation:
Place Matters (.pdf)
Innovation Springs from Many Seeds, But Soil Is Equally Important
By Maryann Feldman
The Federal Role in Catalyzing Innovation (.pdf)
Beyond the Beltway and Through the Networked Economy
By Richard Seline and Steven Miller
Pittsburgh’s Targeted Incubator (.pdf)
Taking Innovation to the Next Level
By James F. Jordan and Paul L. Kornblith
Creating a National Innovation Foundation (.pdf)
Economic Prosperity Rests on Diverse Technology
By Robert Atkinson and Howard Wial
Benchmarking Foreign Innovation (.pdf)
The United States Needs to Learn from Other Industrialized Democracies
By Stephen Ezell
British Innovation Policy (.pdf) (online exclusive)
Lessons for the United States
By Will Straw
Comments on this article
Look at the facts: NASA’s half dozen regional centers of innovation have been decimated. ben Laden couldn’t have done worse.
In high energy physics, it was a sad note in 1991 when the many millions invested in the Texas Supercollider became a hole in the ground, yes, He was the political leader.
Yes, you might say but we lead in airplane design, right?
Barely, UK was about to get the biggest gift ever for the production of the next generation of refueling tankers.
That was barely stopped. There will be an entirely new generation of engineers before an American company could even think, for a minute about competiing with a new design. You know, “How do you get to Julliard?” Practice, practice, practice…
There are many, many more sad examples.
Why not learn from the bad and the good experiences?
January 16th, 2009 at 10:26 pmYou want to expedite innovation on robotic all terrain truck control and driving?
Do what DARPA did! A contest! Big steps were taken.
Want to innovate a way to the Moon?
Do what Google did! Offer $25 Million to anyone that does that. There are two active entrants.
But will they fail? Von Braun said “It is not that I knew more than anybody, it is that I had more opportunities to fail than anybody. I learnt from mistakes.”
Did the X-Prize fail? No, there was a winner and they are getting ready to go further to the next step.
The X-Prize was renamed in honor of an cosmonaut that orbited with the Russian Soyus capsule and donate $25 Million to the X-Prize. The money came from sale of a big Hi-tech company in Dallas. She wants us to succeed.
My point, to be made, requires increasing our level of humility. Hu?
You cannot breed a superior race, that has been proven.
You cannot train an inventor. Read the biography of Edison?
Yes, but if you had the “right” environment, inventions would flow.
It is appealing. It appeals to our sense of “order”, this first, that second, etc. Did Werner Von Braun have such an environment?
Did you know that Pres. Kennedy had to rule in his favor on a technical issue because all of NACA favored another approach to the Moon? Other than Pres. Elect Obama,
do we have other examples of that?
Finally, consider the Internet technology. Who is pushing it? Where is this environment that promotes these ideas?
Where are the ideas found?
First: Google and Intel and they put their money on the line, Billions of Dollars and they do not wait for committees to review, evaluate and recommend.
Why not use a proven concept, instead of failed concepts?
ARPA developed the Internet without having a military requirement. They, allegedly, wanted to link computers.
The best approach is Incentives.
A. Contribute a few millions to the X-Prize and they will develop a cheap way to put payloads in orbit.
B. Take a chance and expect failures. For example, $100 Million, could make the Single Stage To Orbit Space plane concept a reality, or a big explosion.
I have three degrees in Aero and I am convinced the principles are sound and Reaction Motors of UK will be the first to do it. Let’s join them on this big step for mankind.
Don’t be swayed by alleged “pro-America” that will never admit that every year 100,000 of the best technical jobs in the nation are reserved for FOREIGH GRADUATES!!
These smart $%^$% come here sponsored by Hi-Tech companies, probably from Silicon Valley -where I used to work. Are you still on the chair? There is more.
The well known Institute in India holds yearly competition for the lucky few they accept. Those they reject, readily get places in the top technical universities in the nation. I will not mention their names, they do get excellent students. One of those turned me down still hurts.
If they don’t care to discuss how scientists should be trained, how can you optimize a process they cannot describe or discuss, without jingoistic distractions?