54.3 F
San Diego
Thursday, Mar 28, 2024
-Advertisement-

It’s Time for Feds to Promote Cluster Initiatives

Business clusters have existed throughout American history. Naturally occurring clusters — like Detroit’s auto industry, Akron, Ohio’s tire plants, and Hollywood’s film studios — all developed because of a combination of geographic and natural resources exploited by local inventors and entrepreneurs.

These clusters produced more than cars, whitewalls and hit movies — they created the demand for hundreds of smaller parts and services suppliers and produced thousands of jobs. Clusters like these evolved and grew over decades. However, the days of waiting for clusters to grow on their own accord have passed. In today’s challenging economic times, Mother Nature could use a little help from human ingenuity and even Uncle Sam.

Due to rising global competition, America’s capacity for generating stable, well-paying jobs is at risk. In today’s environment, regions need to be thinking about the industry clusters that can harness their assets to grow new enterprises that can contribute to prosperity. The federal government is positioned to enable locally driven cluster initiatives and we need to be sure that they do so.

San Diego witnessed this organic phenomenon with the growth of both wireless information technology and the life sciences clusters that sprang up along the Torrey Pines mesa adjacent to UC San Diego. The community networks that included university researchers, venture capital firms, government, work force organizations and catalysts like UCSD Connect have been largely responsible for the robustness and success of these clusters. And San Diego continues to grow innovative clusters in new and converging technologies such as clean technology, health care IT and biofuels.

Many governments and industry organizations across the globe have turned to this concept of coordinated economic development in recent years as a means to stimulate urban and regional economic growth. As a result, a large number of cluster initiative organizations were started during the ’90s, and the trend continues.

In fact, 26 of 31 European Union countries have cluster initiative programs, as do Japan and Korea. The United States does not.

Four Key Players

Even in collaborative San Diego there is no platform that regularly brings together the four key players: the research community, which is developing the technologies that will shape the businesses and jobs of the future; the entrepreneurs and investors, who can turn a promising technology into a business; the economic developers, who focus on and use resource allocation and business policies that can assure economic prosperity; and the educators and work force training organizations, which focus on the general and specialized skills needed in globally competitive industries.

Some observers point out that there are several other excellent federal economic and work force programs in place — including the Department of Commerce’s community-based job training grants, National Science Foundation education grants, and the Department of Labor’s Education and Training Administration.

The problem, for the most part, is that they operate in splendid isolation from one another at the federal level. There are few incentives to create at the local level integrative platforms through which multiple voices can be heard and synergistic initiatives (that produce commercialization, business growth and job creation) can take place. This region needs and deserves such a place.

Government Role

Karen Mills, author of a Brookings Institution paper on cluster initiatives, concurs that the federal government should be pressed to do more to promote clusters. “Federal understanding of and interest in the economic competitiveness of all regions has been minimal,” said Mills.

The Brookings Institution report recommends that the federal government promote cluster development with a two-pronged approach: First, create a national information center to track cluster programs and study cluster dynamics; and second, establish a grants program to support regional and state clusters.

San Diego’s business supporters and elected public officials need to push for cluster development. The time has come to align federal programs to maximize the resources provided to each region. The time has come as well for more ongoing conversations and strategic thinking between economic and business development associations, the research and innovation community, and the education and training providers across the region. Our long-term competitiveness and prosperity depend on it.

Mary L. Walshok is the associate vice chancellor of public programs and dean of Extension at UC San Diego.

-Advertisement-

Featured Articles

-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-

Related Articles

-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-