National Academies Press: OpenBook

Clustering for 21st Century Prosperity: Summary of a Symposium (2012)

Chapter: Introduction--Mary Good

« Previous: Welcome-Charles Wessner
Suggested Citation:"Introduction--Mary Good." National Research Council. 2012. Clustering for 21st Century Prosperity: Summary of a Symposium. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13249.
×

Introduction

Mary Good
University of Arkansas at Little Rock
and STEP Board

Dr. Good welcomed the participants on behalf of the STEP Board and explained that the whole issue of state and regional initiatives has been of ongoing interest of the board. “We have done a lot of work looking at innovation centers around the world, and now we are looking at our own,” she said. “It really has been an extraordinary experience.”

This particular initiative also has been very rewarding because the partners have been able to move much faster than the normal pace, Dr. Good said. “That has been an advantage in my view because we need to move innovation policy quickly.”

The successes of U.S. clusters such as Silicon Valley, Boston’s Route 128, and Research Triangle Park in creating industries and economic development have generated global interest in clusters, Dr. Good noted. Now other governments are promoting synergies between business, government, and research organizations in their regions. Dr. Good said she finds it both interesting and problematic that the rest of the world “is replicating our successes better than we are.”

There are national cluster-development programs under way in Japan, South Korea, and all of the nations of the European Union. Also, emerging economies such as Brazil are quickening their pace of building clusters. Dr. Good noted that China has a least 54 research parks, many of a very large scale.2

In the United States, a number of state and local governments have sought to stimulate economic development through regional clusters. The symposium, therefore, will discuss what some of the states are doing. Such state and local

image

2 See the presentation by Zhu Shen of BioForesight in National Research Council, Understanding Research, Science and Technology Parks: Global Best Practices, op. cit.

Suggested Citation:"Introduction--Mary Good." National Research Council. 2012. Clustering for 21st Century Prosperity: Summary of a Symposium. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13249.
×

efforts are important, Dr. Good said. Different parts of the country will have different kinds of clusters. “But we’ve got to have them all over,” Dr. Good said. “We can’t just have them in special places.”

The nanotechnology center being developed in Albany, New York, looks like it will succeed, she said, and should be studied more closely. But in many cases, the state and local entities don’t have critical mass and don’t have the sustained policy support to move clusters forward. Term limits for local politicians also make it difficult to achieve continuity for cluster-development efforts from administration to administration. “One of them starts something and it dies in the next round,” she observed. Our observations indicate sustained innovation is a marathon, not a sprint.

Most successful innovation clusters in the United States have drawn heavily on nearby national laboratories and universities. Many state governors today have decided their state universities will have to be part of the engines of innovation. “So for those of us in universities, whether we like it or not, that is something that is going to take a little getting used to,” Dr. Good said. “I don’t think we will be able to get out from under that necessity.”

Many people forget Silicon Valley’s innovation cluster was a product of multiple private industries interacting with major universities, Dr. Good said. “If you were to take out the impact of Stanford and UC-Berkeley, Silicon Valley would not exist. It is almost that simple.” It also is important to remember that, as a private university, Stanford could do what it wanted. “They didn’t have to ask permission,” she said. “So we need to turn the state universities loose a little bit to make this work.”

Two panels in the symposium, Dr. Good noted, will discuss what universities and leading national laboratories are doing to commercialize their research. If one studies the record of national laboratories as a whole so far, “it has not been a big success story,” she said. “So how can we improve that over time?”

Dr. Good also noted that although the United States has had a strong record of developing innovation clusters, “we have had no legislatively authorized program to specifically, comprehensively support clusters. We have become hung up on words. Everybody says that is industrial policy, we don’t do that, and therefore the initiatives die. Let’s call it something else. I don’t care. But let’s get it moving in one way or another.”

There is evidence, however, that things are about to change, Dr. Good said. “I believe the Obama Administration has undertaken a number of important initiatives focused on the development of clusters.”

Suggested Citation:"Introduction--Mary Good." National Research Council. 2012. Clustering for 21st Century Prosperity: Summary of a Symposium. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13249.
×
Page 41
Suggested Citation:"Introduction--Mary Good." National Research Council. 2012. Clustering for 21st Century Prosperity: Summary of a Symposium. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13249.
×
Page 42
Next: Panel I: Clustering for Growth »
Clustering for 21st Century Prosperity: Summary of a Symposium Get This Book
×
Buy Hardback | $45.00 Buy Ebook | $35.99
MyNAP members save 10% online.
Login or Register to save!
Download Free PDF

Responding to the challenges of fostering regional growth and employment in an increasingly competitive global economy, many U.S. states and regions have developed programs to attract and grow companies as well as attract the talent and resources necessary to develop regional innovation clusters. These state and regionally based initiatives have a broad range of goals and increasingly include larger resources commitments, often with a sectoral focus and often in partnership with foundations and universities. Recent studies, however, have pointed out that many of these efforts lack the scale and the steady commitment needed for success. This has prompted new initiatives to coordinate and concentrate investments from a variety of federal agencies to develop research parks, business incubators, and other strategies to encourage entrepreneurships and high-tech development in the nation's regions. Understanding the nature of innovation clusters and public policies associated with successful cluster development is therefore of current relevance.

Clustering for 21st Century Prosperity identifies best practices with regard to goals, structures, instruments, modes of operation, synergies across private and public programs, funding mechanisms and levels, and evaluation efforts. The committee, under the Board on Science, Technology, and Economic Policy (STEP) is reviewing selected state and regional efforts to capitalize on federal and state investments in areas of critical national needs. This review includes both efforts to strengthen existing industries as well as specific technology focus areas such as nanotechnology, stem cells, and advanced energy in order to better understand program goals, challenges, and accomplishments.

As part of this study, the committee is convening a series of public workshops and symposia involving responsible local, state, and federal officials and other stakeholders. Drawing from discussions at these symposia, fact-finding meetings, and commissioned analyses of existing state and regional programs and technology focus areas, the committee will subsequently produce a final report with findings and recommendations focused on lessons, issues, and opportunities for complementary U.S. policies created by these state and regional initiatives.

  1. ×

    Welcome to OpenBook!

    You're looking at OpenBook, NAP.edu's online reading room since 1999. Based on feedback from you, our users, we've made some improvements that make it easier than ever to read thousands of publications on our website.

    Do you want to take a quick tour of the OpenBook's features?

    No Thanks Take a Tour »
  2. ×

    Show this book's table of contents, where you can jump to any chapter by name.

    « Back Next »
  3. ×

    ...or use these buttons to go back to the previous chapter or skip to the next one.

    « Back Next »
  4. ×

    Jump up to the previous page or down to the next one. Also, you can type in a page number and press Enter to go directly to that page in the book.

    « Back Next »
  5. ×

    Switch between the Original Pages, where you can read the report as it appeared in print, and Text Pages for the web version, where you can highlight and search the text.

    « Back Next »
  6. ×

    To search the entire text of this book, type in your search term here and press Enter.

    « Back Next »
  7. ×

    Share a link to this book page on your preferred social network or via email.

    « Back Next »
  8. ×

    View our suggested citation for this chapter.

    « Back Next »
  9. ×

    Ready to take your reading offline? Click here to buy this book in print or download it as a free PDF, if available.

    « Back Next »
Stay Connected!