Shaping a Competitiveness Strategy for the next 25 Years

Session Overview

Pulling from insights gathered throughout the Mountain West edition of the Competitiveness Conversations Across America series, the cohosts examined the enabling conditions essential for the region’s competitiveness strategy over the next 25 years, including the intersection of policy, infrastructure, education, innovation, and workforce development.

Key Session Insights

The I-25 Innovation Corridor is on the rise; Council on Competitiveness President and CEO Deborah Wince-Smith praised the Mountain West as a success story of building collaboration and regional innovation ecosystems. Joined by the Mountain West innovation ecosystems’ most prominent leaders, she began by asking where the region is headed next.

University of Wyoming President Dr. Ed Seidel began by expressing optimism for the region, and for Wyoming’s place in it. The University of Wyoming recently achieved R1 research university status and has been working to be an active player in regional economic development efforts like the NSF Engine and the Elevate Quantum Tech Hub. The school has also expanded its footprint to community colleges across the state, investing $70 million to build the skilled workforce needed for the next economy. Wyoming has historically focused on energy resource extraction and export, and is now focused on building the industry for extracting rare earths and critical minerals for manufacturing.

Ms. Wince-Smith, building on this new focus in Wyoming, pitched the idea of forming a consortium for mining and processing critical minerals between the three Mountain West states to take full advantage of this natural resource.

Cheyenne has emerged as a hub for supercomputing, enhancing Wyoming’s reputation in high technology. Dr. Seidel elevated the importance of maintaining the United States' leadership in supercomputing as an existential challenge, which requires an all-of-government and all-of-society approach to tackle. This includes collaboration among laboratories and universities to strengthen U.S. capabilities in supercomputing. But with the future of high-end computer development increasingly uncertain, especially with the introduction of quantum technology, Dr. Seidel advocated for a new ten-year plan to advance computing, which should involve partnerships with like-minded and technically proficient allies.

Asked about the challenges facing his university, University of Colorado Boulder Chancellor Dr. Justin Schwartz could name several: the uncertain survival of the CHIPS and Science Act, the broader uncertainty coming out of Washington, foreign graduate student recruitment, and the declining willingness of students to attend universities are all important hurdles to overcome. But most important is the problem of getting the public back on the side of universities, believing them to be worthwhile institutions advancing the interests of the country and its people. He noted that his school, the largest in the Colorado system, was often described as the “flagship.” However, a flagship has to lead, not just go it alone; in his view, tremendous work is needed to change the public discourse around higher education.

When Ms. Wince-Smith asked about how Colorado-Wyoming Climate Resilience Engine CEO Mr. Mike Freeman would tackle the problem of sustainable funding, he raised that while the NSF Engine was theoretically funded for ten years, today that continued support is uncertain. Right now, the Engine is looking at its potential economic impact ten years from now if it keeps pace as a way of attracting non-federal investment: 18,000 jobs and $3 billion; while that sounds impressive, Mr. Freeman stressed it could be far greater if investment ramps up.

Considering how quantum computing would impact the rest of the Mountain West innovation ecosystem, TechHubNow! CEO Ms. Wendy Lea described it as an enabling technology to integrate with and activate other industries. Therefore, in her view, it did not make sense to go fundraising independently; an overall regional strategy across industries and domains would be more effective, especially if they could coalesce around a single regional “story” and vision for innovation.

Dr. Schwartz seconded the potential of cross-sectoral connectivity. AI will accelerate energy and quantum, which will in turn accelerate each other. The Mountain West has all the interdependent pieces of this virtuous cycle, giving it an incredible advantage, making for a powerful “story” on its own. Ms. Wince-Smith challenged the co-hosts to make good on this vision of integration, using it as a base for a new regional funding model.

National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) Director Dr. Martin Keller was glad to talk about the region’s strengths across the whole supply chain, including in basic research, high-end manufacturing, and materials production, but warned these individual strengths do not guarantee regional success. He was concerned about increased stress in the system caused by uncertainty, and that institutions would pull back and focus internally, working against the need for greater collaboration. Linking together will make the region stronger, in his mind, allowing it to leverage its inherent strength in innovation to compete on a global scale.

When asked how to bring the security ecosystem in Colorado Springs into the broader Mountain West innovation ecosystem, Ms. Lea suggested an good approach would be to pick a handful of specific projects to get a foot in the door. But she also cautioned in the Mountain West there is a tendency to over-plan and over-engineer partnerships at the expense of agility. That needs to change to take advantage of the opportunities presented by disruption, both working with and dependant of the military resources in the region.

When asked to share their key takeaways from the Conversation, Mr. Freeman noted concerns about funding models for the NSF Engine reinforced his desire to quickly explore alternatives to federal funding to ensure long-term success. He  sees private and philanthropic capital as promising avenues for support and gained new ideas on how to pursue them.

Dr. Keller acknowledged that NREL's initial instinct for partnerships was often to focus on geographically close institutions like Colorado University Boulder or leading national universities such as MIT or Stanford. However, he has a greater conviction now to work with potential partners in New Mexico and Wyoming to strengthen the regional three-state ecosystem.

Dr. Schwartz, still relatively new to the Mountain West, recognized the necessity of accelerating relationship-building with regional partners. Meanwhile, Dr. Seidel plans to work on a concept paper for the proposed mineral consortium and continue advocating for the importance of computer science at the University of Wyoming, understanding that many fundamental advances depend on this field.

Finally, Ms. Lea intends to revitalize storytelling efforts in the Mountain West to better direct the region's capital to areas where it can create the most impact.

Concluding the Conversation, Ms. Wince-Smith reiterated the crucial importance of American leadership in quantum computing and climate resilience for both national and economic security. She called the push for greater supply chain integration and mineral utilization a platform on which to build manufacturing in the region to complement its technological advancement. Finally, inviting the participants to future Council events and thanking the co-hosts for their hospitality, she expressed her desire to return to the Mountain West to see how the learnings from the Conversation were put into action.