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May 10, 2007
It is a well-known baseball adage: to effectively compete, you should not field your nine best players, but rather your “best nine.” The 2007 Philadelphia Phillies have supported the veracity of this maxim, emphasizing collective cohesiveness over individual talent to reach the postseason for the first time in 14 years.
In at least one respect, the challenge for regional leaders to compete in the innovation economy is similar to that for a baseball coach: how do you leverage existing resources and talent to maximize regional economic benefit? Or, to continue the analogy, how do make sure that you are consistently fielding your best nine?
Concerning innovation, Greater Philadelphia certainly has no shortage of individual talent. With 88 colleges and universities across the 11-county, tri-state region graduating more than 60,000 students each year, the region is flush with intellect. These graduates have helped Greater Philadelphia compete with other regions on key measures of innovativeness, such as grant awards, invention disclosure, patenting, and licensing.
Nor does there seem to be a shortage of resources. The region has benefited from two decades of state investment in a series of programmatic endeavors to support innovation, including the Ben Franklin Technology Partners, a network of Life Science Greenhouses, and Keystone Innovation Zones. Each initiative has a strong presence in southeastern Pennsylvania and has played a leading role in promoting the commercialization of innovative technologies.
Still, the region can do better job leveraging our resources and our talent. It is critical for Greater Philadelphia to connect innovative ideas emanating from colleges, universities, and research centers with private sector development and growth.
Recognizing this need, the CEO Council for Growth recently commissioned the Economy League to conduct a gap analysis and evaluate ways in which the region can increase its commercialization potential. In our analysis, we found that Greater Philadelphia has an innovation infrastructure that is second to none. But we also identified factors that impede the transfer of technologies from laboratory to commercial use and inhibit the region’s ability to fully leverage its significant assets.
The report, released by the CEO Council at the Pennsylvania BIO fall conference in Philadelphia, assesses opportunities for breaking down these barriers. These include:
The report also suggests several ways to accelerate the technology transfer process. Summary recommendations include:
Streamlined, gapless, coordinated, connections: the building blocks for successfully linking centers of innovation with industry to commercialize technologies. However, in isolation these building blocks are not enough. Success requires integration, and the mortar is strong regional leadership. Only a comprehensive and inclusive regional mission and identity can effectively develop and implement a strategy for seamlessly incorporating these foundational elements.
The stakes are high. Other regions have built upon strong foundations of innovation to develop entire economies around technology-based start-ups and technology licensing agreements. In San Diego, Raleigh-Durham, and Pittsburgh, regional leaders have figured out how to institutionalize collaboration and accelerate this process, giving each region a leg up over the competition.
In Greater Philadelphia, public, private, and academic stakeholder groups actively recognize the advantages of working together. At the Navy Yard, in University City, and elsewhere, stakeholders have begun to act strategically, forging formal and informal collaborative partnerships to support innovation and promote technology commercialization. These actions will allow the region to better leverage its innovation infrastructure, maximizing existing resources and talent and ensuring that when Greater Philadelphia competes with other regions, it always fields its best nine.
-- Erik Johanson, Research Associate
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