APLICACIÓN DE LOS CONVENIOS INTERNACIONALES CAPÍTULO I

Ohio can become a leader in the 21st century only if it addresses the following key drivers for building a stronger technology-driven economy:

• Increase business—higher education connectivity around talent and technology within and across Ohio’s regions.

While Ohio has an impressive set of research organizations in both the public and private sectors, they are spread across the state and rarely have been connected directly toward addressing the needs and problems of industry. Researchers are disconnected from industry needs and, in turn, industry is concerned about the relevance of the academic enterprise. While programs such as the Edison Centers and others have attempted to address this issue, Ohio’s historically strong manufacturers have been disinclined to collaborate with higher education.

Ohio’s competitor states—whether Pennsylvania, Kentucky, or Indiana—have all initiated new efforts in recent years to address and increase the building of strong collaborative relationships between their industries and higher education. Ohio is being left behind, not only by the tech- nology centers such as in New England and Southern California, but even by neighboring states seeing business-higher education partnerships and a strong academic research enterprise as critical to their long-term economic future.

Ohio needs a critical mass of world class research programs built around outstanding faculty researchers undertaking cutting edge work, and these programs should be in areas of interest and importance to Ohio’s current and future economic enterprises. Only two science/engineering department in Ohio (Polymer Science at the University of Akron and Bioengineering at Case Western Reserve University) rank in the top five nationally. While Ohio’s higher education institutions cannot excel in all fields and areas, they should excel in more than two. If they can focus on the core competencies outlined earlier in this report, they can build both world-class stature and address fields important to the state’s current and emerging industries. If Ohio is to indeed become the applied innovation state, world-class research and commercial vehicles and mechanisms are required to turn research into technology to be incorporated into production processes and products.

• Increase the number of strong advanced manufacturing firms and anchors throughout the state that represent leadership in product development and applications.

Too much of Ohio’s manufacturing base today is in slow-growing, well-established markets, whether in large firms lacking aggressive product development or in supplier firms and industries where product design decisions are made by the customer, in many cases located outside of Ohio. Without new product development and technology infusion into production processes, Ohio’s manufacturing base will slowly continue its contraction, hemmed in by outmoded products and production techniques.

Ohio’s advanced manufacturing base represents a different path for future prosperity. Advanced manufacturing firms are more likely to invest in R&D, hire and employ scientific and technical personnel, incorporate the latest production technologies into manufacturing, and change their product lines more frequently. It is this segment of manufacturing, usually found in the industries around the core technologies identified earlier, whose survival and growth is critical to Ohio’s economic future. These firms need to increase their collaboration with research

organizations around their product needs to further modernize and increase the development and application of technology and talent to their product lines.

If Ohio can keep, nurture, encourage, and further develop such advanced manufacturing and technology enterprises, there will be better job and wealth prospects for the state’s citizens; and an expanded role will be needed for higher education institutions in developing talent and technology for advanced manufacturers and technology enterprises. Competencies and tools offered by research organizations can help all manufacturers and technologists, including small and medium enterprises.

• Build an entrepreneurial culture and climate in Ohio by increasing the birth rate of cutting-edge firms, reducing their death rate, and creating a climate and environment for entrepreneurial celebration and success.

Ohio’s population has a history of working for someone else. The new economies of Colorado, California, and Nevada are ones in which entrepreneurs are celebrated. Ohioans must nurture, support, and encourage risk-taking in others, themselves, and their children and grandchildren. The constant churning of firms—new firms being created as old ones die—necessitates that Ohioans be more aggressively entrepreneurial. This is even truer in advanced manufacturing and technology industries.

Ohio’s ranking in such areas as information technology and bioscience does not show a strong record of start-ups. The track record of Ohio universities for spinning off start-up firms from their intellectual property and licensing is not stellar, although improvements are starting to show results. Ohio needs more entrepreneurial role models and more celebrations of entrepreneurial success.

College graduates should be encouraged to work in small firms and, if they want, to go out on their own. Parents must understand that working for the same firm for 40 years or more is unlikely in the new economy. Changing cultures is not simple or easy. It requires persistence and perseverance. It requires incentives, reinforcing support, mentors, role models, and encouragement.

Technological innovation goes hand in hand with formation of new firms with new products and processes. Increasing Ohio’s private sector activities in entrepreneurship are critical to diversify- ing the state’s economy, capturing technology within Ohio industry, and building the industries of the future. Ohio has a risk-averse culture, further constrained by weak access to limited risk capital. There is also a shortage of serial entrepreneurial managers to run such start-ups within Ohio, requiring their importation from outside.

• Reinvigorate state and local economic development leadership to support a business climate in Ohio that recognizes excellence through strategic state and regional invest- ments around core competency strengths and support tools and programs responsive to the needs of technology-driven firms.

State and local economic and business groups and organizations in Ohio have generally been reactive to private sector investment decisions. The “tool kit” of public programs continues to reflect the older manufacturing economy of programs to address branch plants, semi-skilled workers, and bricks and mortar inducements. But the kinds of firms the state and its regions want to encourage and attract in the future are as likely to be interested in such areas as research parks, equity investments, venture capital, quality of life, talent, and university collaboration

opportunities. Ohio’s “tool kit” needs to be upgraded. Some tools need to be thrown out or modified, and new tools need to be added.

• Strengthen the human infrastructure—the base of knowledgeable people that has replaced physical infrastructure as the source of economic strength.

If Ohio is to succeed in this new industrial age, it must have the talent base of knowledgeable workers at all levels—from technician to postdoctorate—who can develop and apply knowledge to the design of new products and their production.

Currently, across all technology occupations, Ohio has a lower overall concentration of tech- nology workers employed across its workforce. Nationally, 4.5 percent of the workforce is found in these technology occupations—and so, Ohio, with 4.0 percent of its workforce in technology occupations, is at roughly 95 percent of the national level. Ohio is particularly weak in scientific employment where it stands 35 percent below the national concentration. In

addition, Ohio has over 5 million adults without sufficient education and skills, and a good percentage of them are already in the workforce. However, due to product obsolescence, plant downsizing, and firm consolidation and merger, Ohio is faced with the daunting task of

upgrading the skills of many who may become displaced in the coming five to 10 years. All these factors suggest that Ohio’s overall industry base is less research intensive than that of the nation.

However, Ohio’s institutions of education are producing large numbers of qualified technology graduates; yet, the growth of Ohio’s technology industries is not sufficient to provide employ- ment for all of them. If current trends continue, the disparity between technology education and technology employment opportunities will likely become even greater as the state’s traditional technology industry strengths support constant or declining numbers of new technology job openings.

This analysis suggests that Ohio’s institutions of higher education are generating an excellent supply of technology graduates. Therefore, policymakers should focus on supporting those technology industries that will yield substantial and escalating numbers of job opportunities in Ohio in the future. The demand for technology graduation will enable Ohio to retain its best and brightest students who currently are forced to seek employment outside the state due to the lack of demand for their skills.

S

Ohio has a window of opportunity. New investments, as well as realignment of existing

technology programmatic dollars, offer Ohio a path for manufacturing modernization and growth as well as for spurring new firms and industries. Technology can mean faster business growth, higher wages, and larger multiplier effects. Ohio has one choice—either embrace and adapt to a technology-driven world or be left behind.

The next section of this report presents a vision of what Ohio’s technology sector could become if strategic investments in the state’s future are made. It is followed by proposed strategies and actions to address the weaknesses identified, to build on Ohio’s strengths, and to capitalize on the opportunities presented.

Ohio’s Technology-Based Economic Development