TASAS Y ANUALIDADES

Create an entrepreneurial economy permeating the state’s public and private organizations.

Increase priority given by Ohio’s higher education

institutions to technology transfer and commercialization.

Table 18: Ohio’s Technology-Based Economic Development Strategies and Actions (continued)

Strategy Action Priority

Energize industry-led technology councils/organizations to increase scale and intensity of networking and firm involvement.

Mid-Term

Make changes in the state’s tax incentives and laws to encourage technology infusion and applications into existing and new businesses in the state by a comprehensive review of its technology impact.

Short-Term

Ensure that Ohio’s public and private sectors are providing adequate technology infrastructure.

Short-Term

Revamp the state’s economic development tool kit of incentives and programs and form the Innovation Ohio Fund to represent a direct targeted program to support these efforts.

Immediate

Strategy Three

Promote a proactive business climate with incentives con- ducive to development and applications in advanced manufacturing and technology industries.

Initiate a focused and selective Ohio technology branding and image campaign.

Short-Term

Encourage the state’s educational system to offer minimum technology curricula for all graduates.

Mid-Term

Investigate the need for further integrating the state’s educational system through enhanced partnerships that provide seamless delivery.

Short-Term

Make Ohio’s higher education system first in the nation by “fast tracking” new multidisciplinary and emerging field curricula in areas of state core competency.

Immediate

Expand the scale and level of industry participation and sponsorship of internship and co-op programs available from the state’s higher education institutions.

Mid-Term

Strategy Four

Develop, retain, and expand the state’s workforce to ensure a sufficient intellectual, entre- preneurial, and technical talent base.

Improve the product of K-12 education as well as upgrade and retrain the existing workforce in technology- based skills and knowledge.

S

O

: B

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R&D

COMPETENCY THAT ARE RELEVANT TO THE EXISTING COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

OF

O

’

’

PRIVATE RESEARCH ORGANIZATIONS CAN EXCEL JOINTLY

.

The emerging economy driven by knowledge, technical expertise, and information requires Ohio’s existing firms as well as newly emerging firms to constantly innovate their products and production. Increasingly, no one firm has sufficient knowledge and expertise to address and solve all problems, let alone take advantage of or financially support cutting-edge research and knowledge in fields from chemistry and physics to bioengineering and metallurgy.

America’s basic research university system, due to federal funding since World War II, has created a national system of expertise that may or may not be related to the location of firms taking advantage of this expertise. For example, Indiana’s orthopedic firms gravitate to the Colorado School of Mines. Oregon’s lumber industry gravitates to Michigan universities, and so on. When basic university research work was not as critical to industry, this may have been sufficient. Certainly, the digital age with Internet access helps to overcome some disadvantages of distance. However, in an ideal world, state governments can complement federal basic research investments by establishing world-class centers of research and innovation in areas of most interest to and critical to the competitiveness and growth of that state’s current as well as emerging industries.

Other states, even in the midst of declining economies and tight state budgets, recognize that they must invest for the long term if their economic fortunes are to improve. Until recently, major industrial states such as California, Texas,

Pennsylvania, and New York have been living off their past invest- ments; but, they are now making a new round of substantial reinvest- ments (in the range of hundreds of millions of dollars) in both capital and operating funds in research and higher education. States are

investing in new and renovated research facilities, addressing campus technology infrastructure, and

providing funds to recruit star faculty throughout the United States with start-up packages that are becoming larger and larger.

California’s Institutes of Science and Innovation

California is investing $100 million in each of four new Institutes of Science and Innovation. The Institutes are a three-way partnership including the State of California, California industry, and the University of California. The institute program is designed to bring together world-class scientists and students with industrial researchers in

cooperative research efforts focused on areas of importance to California’s future economic growth. The institutes, each of which includes the participation of more than one UC

campus, will undertake basic, multidisciplinary research on complex problems requiring the kind of scope, scale,

duration, equipment, and facilities that they uniquely provide. The state requires that the university and industry jointly provide $2 to match every $1 of state funding.

Four institutes were selected for funding through a competitive process. They include

• California Institute for Bioengineering, Biotechnology and Qualitative Biomedical Research

• California Institute of Telecommunications and Information Technology

• California NanoSystems Institute

• Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society.

Ohio has strengths in polymers, engineering, and other core areas identified previously; but, very few highly ranked programs and centers exist. Ohio must do more to build such world-class centers, recruiting stars and their associated enterprises to the state, and linking such expertise and knowledge with the interests of Ohio’s current and future industries. Emerging science and technology breakthroughs in such areas as nanotechnology, bioinformatics, fuel cells, human genomics, simulations and modeling, chemistry, biology, and high-speed machining, to name just a few, have the potential to revolutionize advanced manufacturing in Ohio and offer oppor- tunities to form new industries in the future. Because many of these areas face multidisciplinary technology challenges, Ohio’s strengths in engineering, materials, biosciences, and other areas offer the opportunity to develop, design, and manufacture products through multidisciplinary collaborations between private and public sector organizations and institutions.

Tactics

These six key tactics will be necessary to accomplish this strategy over the next five years: • Build connections among and between research institutions and industry. Ohio’s

research assets and resources are considerable; but, because they are spread across so many regions and organizations, they are not always optimized nor are potential partners aware of them. Building world-class reputation and stature in key fields and ensuring that the research agendas of these centers address industry interests requires increased connectivity among and between higher education and private research organizations and industry. State investments should require evidence of consortium building across regions, institutions, and other organ- izations. Performance will be judged not only by the concrete research and commercial results of the respective organization, but also by the inclusiveness and broad participation of regions and industries in their day-to-day operations.

• Focus investments in core technology competencies. Ohio’s fiscal situation alone

indicates that the state cannot and must not simply invest in more funds for higher education indiscriminately in all fields and areas. As Ohio’s economy improves, further investments to improve the state’s higher education base are needed. In the short- to mid-term, the state must focus its limited resources on those areas in which its research enterprises—public and private—can (1) excel as world-class centers and (2) contribute to and address the research and technology competitiveness issues involving the common core technology areas critical to Ohio’s industry base, now and in the future.

• Establish means to better ensure technology commercialization capabilities to drive the research agenda. To differentiate Ohio’s approach to research investments, they must (1) be integrally tied to and require establishment of mechanisms, approaches, tools, and programs that link industry to research problems, and (2) have seamless efficient systems to pull research and its associated technologies quickly into the private marketplace to address real needs. This, of course, is more likely if industry is involved initially in problem

definition. But, this differentiation also requires that financial support be provided for market assessments of research, adequate equity capital be available around which to form firms with breakthrough prospects, licensing and technology transfer is predictable, and valuation is realistic. Figure 20 illustrates the nonlinear approach to research, in which

Figure 20: Linear vs. Nonlinear Models for Product Innovation

industry and higher education interact from the beginning. Ohio’s R&D focus must move from a linear to a nonlinear approach if it is to accomplish the economic commercialization efforts underlying the support for this strategy.

• Encourage building of multiple, reinforcing relationships among institutions and firms. Collaboration through multidisciplinary research teams is increasingly driving the research enterprise in both higher education and industry. Individuals with backgrounds and expertise in diverse fields are being brought together to address such areas as nanotechnology, fuel cells, MEMs, bioengineering, and biotechnology. Higher education institutions building stature and reputation are recruiting interdisciplinary teams of talent and expertise. To the extent that this expertise can be brought together across higher education institutions and between higher education and industry, Ohio can more quickly build its capacity in certain core technology areas through collaboration. “Networks” of collaborators can result from these efforts, which contribute to building a critical mass of research expertise and, ultimately, a critical mass of technologies, product expertise, and firms nearby. Concen- trations of research knowledge and related industry strengths already have begun to form, and further state investments can further speed and scale these efforts.

• Provide discretionary funding support to encourage institutional partners to seek and secure new opportunities. The state’s investments in building research capacity also must include support to encourage education/industry joint ventures to seek and secure federal and