In an
earlier posting, we asked if state governments could replicate Silicon Valley, a region bubbling with innovative and entrepreneurial people, businesses, and research universities. We looked at Deborah Perry Piscione’s
The Secrets of Silicon Valley: What Everyone Else Can Learn From the Innovation Capital of the World, which outlines many unique and intangible things that stimulate and sustain innovation in the Silicon Valley region.
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| image: Rocky Mountain Institute |
The
Brookings Institute’s Bruce Katz asked a similar question about the federal government’s role in supporting “innovation districts,” relatively dense urban areas where research institutions, R&D intensive companies, entrepreneurial firms, and business incubators cluster together, feeding off each other’s ideas and concepts. Sustaining this feeding frenzy are land use practices that make these areas “livable, walkable, bike-able, and transit connected.”
Innovations districts tend to spring up from the “collaborative efforts of local institutions and leaders and organic market dynamics,” Katz stated. Consequently, there’s no need for the federal government to play a leading role. After all, “emerging districts around the country differ markedly in their leadership structure, sector orientation, and existing economic, physical and networking assets—obviating any ‘one size fits all’ response.”
What the federal government should do, according to Katz, is:
- keep funding basic and applied research at the major research institutions in the heart of the districts;
- “encourage a more robust school-to-work pipeline for sub baccalaureate workers in science, technology, engineering, and math fields”; and
- fund mass transit, affordable housing, and mixed use development projects in the districts.
In short, the federal government should act as a catalyst, spurring the initiatives that are already happening in these districts. But it “should do so in a humble way—doing what cities and metro areas can’t (e.g., providing a strong national platform for research and innovation) and providing support that is respectful of local variation and supportive of local networks and ecosystems,” Katz opined.
