Guest Blogger: Lou Glazer

This week’s guest blog is supplied by Lou Glazer, the president of Ann Arbor-based Michigan Future Inc., a think-tank that examines how Michigan is reshaping its economy. Here’s his first post, and check back throughout the week for more of his thoughts.

---

How to revive our economy is Topic A. When you look at the places across the country with the strongest economies the answer is clear: talent!

What most distinguishes economically successful areas from Michigan is their concentrations of talent, where talent is defined as a combination of knowledge, creativity and entrepreneurship. Quite simply, in a knowledge-driven and entrepreneurial economy, the places with the greatest concentrations of talent win.

If you want to grow a high prosperity economy here, the priority is to prepare, retain and attract talent. Nothing else is close.

As we assess the assets Michigan has to concentrate talent, our higher education
system rises to the top of the list. That is particularly true of our major research
universities. So the most important thing business, civic and political leadership can do
for the future economic success of Michigan and its regions is to ensure the long-term
success of a vibrant and agile higher education system.

One can’t emphasize enough, in a knowledge economy, the strategic importance of
our major research universities. Communities across the globe, recognizing the
importance of research universities, are trying to replicate what we already have here.

One can make a strong case that the most productive state and local economic growth
policies over the past several decades have been public investments in research
universities in Austin, San Diego and North Carolina’s Research Triangle. The payoff in
each case has been huge.

Bill Gates in a 2005 presentation to the National Conference of State Legislatures said
it best:

… take the two big leading industries, industries around biology and medicine, that’s
one, and industries around computer technology, that’s two. The job creation and the
success for those industries have been overwhelmingly in the locations where there is
a great university. There’s an almost perfect correlation between the number of jobs in
a region and the strength of the universities. And, that will continue, whether it’s new fields like nanotechnology, or those two fields I mentioned, on the ongoing strength that they’ll have. And so for this country, we have to have the best universities.

Conventional wisdom has it that the most important contribution that research
universities make to the economy is by spinning off for commercialization new
knowledge. No question places where new knowledge is being created have a big
edge in being the places where new technologies are commercialized. But there are
no guarantees. Its hard to turn an idea into a commercial success. And when you do
often times there aren’t many jobs or they go elsewhere. …

Continued tomorrow here at metromodemedia.com.

---

Have feedback for Lou Glazer? Send it to feedback@metromodemedia.com. For more on  Michigan Future Inc., go to www.michiganfuture.org.