Pillar 4: Grow the Number of Innovation Ecosystems Across America—Extend Place-Making Innovation Best Practices from Coast to Coast

Recommendation 9: Build and bolster innovation capacity and capability across the nation by fostering and expanding place-making innovation beyond the high-tech superstars on the U.S. coasts. 

There is a risk posed by a hyper-concentration of America’s innovation attention and assets in a few increasingly crowded and expensive hubs. To garner the full potential of America’s $30 trillion, 333-million-people, content-sized economy, the country must engage every person and place in the United States in the innovation economy. Today, with new technologies, individuals and institutions across the United States have the power and potential to discover, conceptualize, develop, and scale innovation as never before— and in places previously overlooked as innovation hotbeds. To maximize the innovation capacity and capability of the United States, we must redefine “place” beyond the historic innovation coastal hotbeds to ensure every community can contribute to and reap the benefits from the innovation economy. To deepen, broaden, and engage a larger portion of the nation in the innovation economy, the TLSI recommends the following:

1. To build support for expanding state and local investment in research and place-making innovation, universities and state and local political leaders should offer compelling narratives about the importance of R&D and its commercialization to the community, state, and regional economies, as well as for growing the industrial base, jobs, and national security. Taking this impact-based narrative will help constituents understand the value proposition for their tax-funded investments. 
   
2. State and local governments, in partnership with economic development offices, should increase resourcing of state and regional innovation efforts such as investing in public university research, R&D infrastructure, and programs aimed at translation, deployment, and commercialization. Communities should foster the physical co-location of innovation assets, for example, by building innovation districts. Regions should consider cost-sharing investments to establish large-scale or expensive infrastructure shared by universities and their industry partners. 
   
3. Where assets can be accessed through the internet or other remote technologies, research institutions across the region, country, or even among U.S. allies should form collaborations and partnerships to co-fund and operate them, and to provide access regardless of location. 
   
4. Develop models to coordinate where appropriate the efforts of the major innovation hubs supported by federal investments, to better leverage them for both economic and national security, and to develop clear pathways to transition their innovations into production. This includes leveraging the 31 EDA hubs and 10 NSF regional innovation engines in which the federal government is committed to investing as much as $10 billion. 

Recommendation 10: Ensure skills scale in tandem with scaling of new technologies.

The single greatest advantage but also need for the U.S. technological competitiveness is its people; however, K-12 math and science scores are falling compared to global competitors, and the number of college graduates earning a bachelor’s degree has been flat for the past decade. The United States must increase the pathways for developing the workforce of the future by tailoring educational models, exposing a greater number of people to STEM careers and younger ages, providing essential skills through hands-on experiences that address the demands of modern technology, lowering the costs of higher education, fostering local partnerships that align training with industry needs, etc. To enhance the talent pipeline and better prepare individuals for high-demand job opportunities, the TLSI recommends: 

1. Across the nation, in rural and urban communities, reestablish skilled trade, vocational, and technical education programs and programming for the modern technology era. This includes high school work release and internship programs that allow students to take required high school courses, technical courses, and work at local businesses. These programs should focus on emerging technologies and production processes. These could begin through partnerships with local technical schools in the regions where federally-supported technology, energy, and manufacturing hubs are located. 
   
2. Increase the number of pathways from community college, vocational/trade, and technical schools into the workforce by expanding the use of certificate programs or credentialing.
   
3. Encourage multidisciplinary research and degree programs. 
   
4. Enact a version of the “National Defense Education Act 2.0” to significantly enhance STEM education and workforce development in the United States to help address the current STEM talent crisis. The act would increase the supply of highly trained individuals in critical STEM fields by investing in local STEM ecosystems, allowing states and communities to tailor efforts to their specific needs.