In the January 9, 2004 Issue:

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CCF Innovations Receives $5 Million for Tech Transfer
In what may be the first gift of its kind, a $5 million cash donation has been made to a technology transfer office to endow the commercialization of new health technologies. The Cleveland Clinic announced receipt of the donation from John Ferchill, a Northeast Ohio real estate developer, in mid-December.

CCF Innovations, the commercialization arm of the Clinic, will administer programs funded through the endowment. The gift will be used to support the center’s leadership and partner grants to underwrite programs between companies moving to Cleveland and the Clinic, and early-stage companies located in Cleveland seeking to collaborate with the Cleveland Clinic. A Plain Dealer article reports the donation will support an endowed chair and professorship as well as generate approximately $150,000 for grants to biomedical firms.

Led by former SSTI president Chris Coburn, CCF Innovations was established three years ago to help move more of the Clinic's portfolio of technologies into the marketplace. In 2002 alone, Cleveland Clinic staff disclosed 113 new inventions — an all-time record for the research institution.

That same year CCF Innovations secured $3.4 million in commercialization revenue for the Clinic, leading to the distribution of $1.5 million to 32 Cleveland Clinic inventors in 2002. According to Crains Cleveland.com, CCF Innovations will generate an additional $3.5 million in fees and other revenue for 2003.

Clinic leaders plan to seek additional donations to grow the endowment.

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ICT Leaders Issue Call for Action
The Computer Systems Policy Project (CSPP), an information and communications technology (ICT) advocacy organization comprised of the industry's top chief executive officers, issued a report this week calling for a more activist federal government for encouraging innovation, entrepreneurship and education in the sciences and math.

The 20-page Choose to Compete: How Innovation, Investment and Productivity Can Grow U.S. Jobs and Ensure American Competitiveness in the 21st Century is presented in three sections: performance, competitiveness and partnership. "Performance" points out the contributions information technology and telecommunications have had on America's prosperity and standard of living over the past 30 years.

"Competitiveness" presents the cold facts of a global economy. One pull-quote from the section, perhaps, sums up the reality facing the U.S. economic development community, "Americans who think that foreign workers are no match for U.S. workers in knowledge, skills and creativity are mistaken."

The final, and longest, section titled "Partnerships" lays out a three-tiered policy agenda encouraging the U.S. to cope with globalization through economic growth. CSPP calls for the following actions:

Choose to Compete: How Innovation, Investment and Productivity Can Grow U.S. Jobs and Ensure American Competitiveness in the 21st Century is available at www.cspp.org. CSPP is an affiliation of the CEOs of Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, NCR, Unisys, Motorola, and EMC2.

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Arizona Governor Receives Tech-based ED Recommendations
In 2003, Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano charged the Governor's Council on Innovation and Technology with developing specific recommendations to help diversify the state's economy. With recommendations including new and expanded tax credits, public-private venture capital, angel capital funds, workforce development and internship programs, and lobbying Washington for more funding, the governor now must find a way to finance the plan in a tight fiscal environment.

The draft recommendations from the group, released in December, were developed through five strategic themes: building on Arizona's core competencies; investment versus expenditure; collaboration and partnership – engagement; accountability – measurements, shared responsibility; and leadership and commitment, both public and private. While some of the recommendations are vague, others are very specific:

The Arizona Republic reports Gov. Napolitano will outline her 2004 technology agenda on Feb. 10, using the Council's draft recommendations as a foundation.

More information on the Council's work is available at: http://www.gcit.az.gov/index.html

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NCSC Profiles Leaders for Rural Entrepreneurship
The impacts of globalization and free trade can make the task of building a vibrant local economy daunting. Given the transformation of agriculture from family farms to mega-corps and factory animal facilities, the cards seem doubly stacked against America's smallest communities — those rural towns and counties with fewer than 10,000 residents.

There are exceptions, however. Exceptions that provide strong examples for other communities around the country fighting to maintain their vitality, for example. The National Center for Small Communities (NCSC) has selected three such exceptions to highlight for the first Grassroots Rural Entrepreneurship Awards, funded by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.

Fairfield, Iowa (population 9,602) received top honors, while Broadway, Va., (pop. 2,600) and Turner County, S.D. (pop. 8,849) were recognized as finalists. The accomplishments of public-private efforts to encourage entrepreneurship in each of these communities should be envied by programs and population centers with significantly more resources readily available to them. For instance:

In announcing the awards, NCSC also has identified and published best practices for other small communities to consider and exploit. Many of the lessons learned have relevance to communities of all sizes: the need for a champion; widespread collaboration or buy in; taking a holistic or multi-faceted approach; avoiding cluster approaches to economic development; and, committing for the long haul of several years.

Profiles of the three communities, the lessons learned, and descriptions of various activities local officials can use to spur entrepreneurship are provided in NCSC's free publication, Grassroots Rural Entrepreneurship: Best Practices for Small Communities. The brief resource is available at http://www.smallcommunities.org.

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An SSTI Editorial
For the New Year, Something Has to Change. Perhaps You.
Diffusion of effort can be a great thing in fostering local or regional economic development because there are so many fronts on which the battle must be fought: workforce; business retention and recruitment; entrepreneurship; infrastructure; investing; and, science and technology addressing the needs of different sectors such as manufacturing, retail, service, financial or information technology. Each organization or office can focus its resources exclusively on one or two specific goals head-on for greatest impact.

It can work well when resources are plentiful and when the various economic development organizations recognize and respect the boundaries. Collaboration and constant coordination is key so the individual pieces work as a well oiled, virtual machine. The ability to rise above partisan politics to address the common goal of building a local or regional economy is of utmost importance.

It varies from one metro area to the next, but at some unknown point, the system can turn inward and start to devour itself. Perhaps it is as financial and human capital resources become stretched or personalities too large or the number of organizations too many (often because it's easier to create a new organization than change one entrenched.) The focus becomes turf wars and power grabs among the now competing organizations and the original common goal is lost in the bloodbath. Visitors to the community – for instance, businesses looking to relocate or expand – leave trying to decide which cliche is most appropriate: too many chiefs... or too many cooks.

The situation was bad enough when it was simply traditional economic development groups fighting amongst themselves. The addition of technology-based economic development and university-based research clouded the picture even more as different efforts were required to address different issues: angel capital, intellectual property, research parks, technology entrepreneurship, R&D collaboration, or a more technically skilled workforce in math, science and engineering. Cluster-based strategies throw in another element — choosing hot sectors to focus new investment and resources, leaving some businesses feeling neglected and abandoned.

It seems the final blow for many regions and communities has been the septuple whammy over the past two years as the dot-com crash, the economic recession, the threat of terrorism, the states' fiscal crises, manufacturing's restructuring, free trade and globalization collectively took their individual tolls. Something needs to change.

Cleveland appears to be one of those communities ready to make that change. The largest economic development organizations, often competitors in the past, have taken a hard look at Northeast Ohio's public, private and quasi-public economic development infrastructure and are shaking things up. There have been several announcements of mergers, consolidations and regionalization. The latest, and perhaps biggest, is the Dec. 19 announcement of the consolidation of the Greater Cleveland Growth Association, Cleveland Tomorrow, and the Greater Cleveland Roundtable.

Temporarily called Greater Cleveland Tomorrow, the new organization will focus on:

Don't think the need to address these changes applies only to larger, older metro areas like Cleveland. Other parts of the country also are benefiting or could benefit from critical self-assessments resulting in new structures and restructures.

If, when collaborating with other groups in your community, you find more time is spent arguing over who gets top billing or the money than what you'll accomplish, then it's time to refocus.

If you find it difficult to work with a local economic development group because they are affiliated with one political party and your organization is aligned with the other, then it's time to replace both groups with a single nonpartisan entity focused on real tech-based economic development.

Old jurisdictional, political, cultural boundaries have to be ignored. Egos and job descriptions have to be discarded. Risks have to be taken; new ideas embraced. If you don't want to do it, step aside.

This economy – powered by the Internet, global outsourcing and less restricted flows of capital – isn't going to wait for the communities that have forgotten how to work as communities. Innovation and economic growth will take place in those regions willing to embrace and enact big change.

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People
The beginning of 2004 finds many folks in the tech-based economic development community making career changes:

Deborah Fleischaker has been appointed deputy secretary for the New Mexico Department of Economic Development.

The Greater Baltimore Alliance, now renamed as the Economic Alliance of Greater Baltimore, has appointed David Gillece as chief executive officer and Christian Johansson as managing director.

Maryland's Department of Business and Economic Development has reorganized into three geographically defined divisions. Robert Hannon has been named to run the regional program.

During its annual meeting in December, members of the National League of Cities have elected Charlie Lyons, a selectman for Arlington, MA, to serve a one-year term as president.

The Acting Director for the Idaho Department of Commerce is Roger Madsen. Madsen also is serving as director of the state Department of Labor.

Joe May, president of Colorado's community college system, announced his retirement, effective in February.

The Greater Antelope Valley Economic Alliance has appointed Tony Moon as its new president.

Robert Olsen, the director of the Fitzsimons Redevelopment Authority, will become the head of the Economic Development Administration's regional office in Denver.

Robert Pozen, secretary of economic development for Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, announced his resignation, effective at the end of 2003.

The Michigan Economic Development Corporation has named Sandy Ring to the new position of vice president for economic development policy.

Kelvin Simmons is the new director of the Missouri Department of Economic Development, replacing Joe Driskell who held the position for 10 years. Simmons had been serving as chairman of the state's Public Service Commission.

Leroy Williams has been named as the new technology secretary for the state of Colorado. Williams, previously the state's chief information officer, will manage the Governor's Office of Innovation and Technology.

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