Senator Rockefeller described the grant as “a real game-changer in West Virginia,” and I could not agree more.  Broadband access is a critical component of rural economic growth.  In a world where some people can work from almost anywhere, they can’t work from an area that lacks basic broadband access.

Now, I am sad to report, Dr. Florida has concluded that we should just give up on community development.  Instead of supporting communities, explains The American Prospect in an article aptly titled “The Ruse of the Creative Class,” we should start supporting people.  His words from a May 2009 blog post: “People – not industries or even places – should be our biggest concern.  We can best help those who are hardest-hit by the [economic] crisis, by providing a generous social safety [net], investing in their skills, and when necessary helping them become mobile and move where the opportunities are.”

Had we known back then how easy it was to (re)create West Virginia, we could have saved a lot of time and money by buying everyone suitcases and renting them Ryder trucks so they could move to more stylish bergs like Austin, Texas; Raleigh, North Carolina; and Boulder, Colorado.

Was Dr. Florida correct then or is he correct now?  Stay tuned.

• The first problem, I daresay, is with Vision Shared’s mission: “To bridge social, political and economic gaps by BRINGING PEOPLE TOGETHER to confront the issues and needs facing West Virginia.” I realize that bringing people together, which is better known as event planning or party planning to the uninitiated, can be quite an accomplishment, but it is hardly a “meaningful” accomplishment for an organization in existence for almost a decade. During my eight years working in government, I quickly learned that the problem with getting things done rarely is that key stakeholders don’t meet – the public policy world is filled with party planners.  Rather it was that no one ever does much of anything after being brought together.  An organization that makes bringing people together its primary mission is destined to fail at accomplishing much of anything else, regardless of whom it brings together.
• The second problem, I daresay, is with Vision Shared’s goal: “To strengthen the economy, reshape communities, promote progressive government and improve the quality of life for all West Virginians.”  No organization can be all things to all people – and certainly not with a $600,000 annual budget.

Like the organization itself, the report is a mile wide and an inch deep.  You have to skip to the top of page 12 (and can stop at the bottom of page 13) of the 18 page report to find a discussion of the group’s accomplishments during 2009.  The highlights listed:

• Early Child Development. They issued a report with some recommendations. No discussion of accomplishments in improving early child development.
• Creative Communities.  They held a conference. Again no discussion of accomplishments in creating or sustaining creative communities.
• Technology Based Economic Development. They created yet another free-standing non-profit organization – TechConnectWV.  Again no discussion of accomplishments in bringing technology-based economic development to West Virginia.
• Entrepreneurship.  They launched the Young Entrepreneurs Support (YES) Network.  Clever acronym, but what does it do?  And, yes, they created a business “plan” to focus on marketing West Virginia-made consumer goods.  How many new entrepreneurs do we have as a result of these efforts?  How many jobs have been created?
• Building Bridges and Empowering Citizens.  They supported the growth of yet another group – Generation West Virginia – and yet another conference for group participants.
• Results-Based Government.  They supported the creation of another state government agency, GO HELP, to coordinate governmental health care entities.  Much like the much-ballyhooed and failed Governor’s Cabinet on Children and Families?
• Permitting.  They crowed about legislation, passed in 2008, to make it easier for new entrepreneurs to find the information they need to engage in business in West Virginia.  It’s called Business4WV, folks, and it’s been around for a while.  Although not perfect, it’s very good and facilitated quite easily my entry into the small business world this past year. Surely no one seriously thinks West Virginians with the talent, drive, and ideas to create going business enterprises don’t create them because it’s hard to comply with basic business filing, permitting, and tax requirements.

What did Vision Shared accomplish? More plans, reports with recommendations, and conferences?  Another notoriously-difficult-to-sustain 501(c)(3) organization, another state government “coordinating” agency with little real power, and another solution to a business problem that doesn’t exist?  These are not meaningful accomplishments for a group that has been in “business,” literally and figuratively, for more than a decade.

In his new book The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves, W. Brian Arthur questions our notion of that great buzzword “innovation.”  Says Arthur:

There isn’t a deep understanding of innovation out there.  And I think you can see that because the way innovation is described is very hand-wavy, and-then-something-creative-happens.  All societies want to be innovative, but in the absence of any deep idea of innovation, governments and companies tend to run after what seems to be the latest idea; that if you somehow have, ‘creativity,’ or invest in R&D, or set up industrial parks, that’s going to work.

In his book review, Lee Drutman explains the book’s basic argument this way:

New technology is just combining old technologies in new ways.  And all technology is, at its core, simply the harnessing of nature and its manifold phenomena for human needs.

He goes on to say:

The key implication … is that … innovations do not come out of nowhere.  ”There are not magic wands or bright ideas in bathtubs,” Arthur said….  Rather, innovation is something that comes from the hard work of decades and decades of education and training.  It is something that comes from devoting lots of resources to universities and investing in loads of basic science.

In other words, there is no “magic” shortcut to business innovation, contrary to what you might hear at the next economic development conference you attend.

The article summarizes the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD’s) study of higher education’s role in local and regional economies.  Although its focus is international, the study offers numerous insights of relevance to West Virginia’s community and economic development efforts:

• “In the knowledge economy, people no longer follow jobs – jobs follow people.”  The article explains why technology companies like Google, Yahoo and FAST have set up research and development bases in Trondheim, Norway, which is a mere 500 kilometers from the Arctic Circle.  It is home to the Norwegian University of Technology and has a high concentration of the knowledge, skills and infrastructure needed for innovation.  The temperature there may be cold (a high of 53º F today), but the talent pool is hot!

• “It is becoming clear that despite the ‘death of distance,’ innovation continues to cluster around specific regions and urban centers that have skilled people, vibrant communities, and the infrastructure for innovation.”  Communities without strong higher education institutions are very unlikely to be clusters of innovation.  This is the best argument that can be made for not reducing West Virginia’s number of colleges of universities; the communities of which they are a part will struggle without them.
• “There is considerable resistance among the academic community to local and regional engagement….  The regional agenda is a particularly tough challenge for research intensive universities.”  The same is true in West Virginia.  West Virginia’s community and technical colleges are far more engaged in local and regional development than are other higher education institutions.  Having said that, there are pockets of innovation at virtually all of West Virginia’s higher education institutions (e.g., Concord University’s Nick Joe Rahall, II Technology Center).  The state needs to support this type of activity.
• “A … profitable approach is to transform the economy by building on existing strengths – a strategy that allows for incremental change and growth.”  Their point is that the investment needed to create another “Silicon Valley” would be overwhelming and might not succeed, whereas focusing on a region’s strengths is less costly and more likely to produce a favorable return.  This is precisely what the West Virginia Community and Technical College System is doing with its sector-based approach to economic development.  Under the sector-based approach, you bring together people connected to a key regional industry with growth potential and figure out how higher education can provide it with a skilled workforce and help it innovate.  It is unfortunate that the state’s research universities are not playing a more significant role in these efforts.
• “At the end of the day,… a thriving regional economy benefits colleges and universities in innumerable ways.  Even so, it may require a journey of internal reform for a university to take some responsibility for generating that prosperity.”  If Marshall University wants to bring in top-notch researchers, Huntington must be the kind of community where a top-notch researcher would want to live.  This is why President Stephen Kopp, I suspect, has been an active participant in the Create Huntington initiative and has made “community and service” one of the four pillars of Marshall’s strategic plan.  What’s good for Huntington is good for Marshall University.