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PROCEEDINGS 59
Panel III
Innovation Clusters and Economic Development
Moderator:
Lester Lefton
Kent State University
Dr. Lefton, the moderator, set the tone for a panel on clusters by using a
mathematical analogy. “In the case of economic development,” he said, “we talk
about putting groups of things together in a situation where we hope 2 + 2 + 2
will equal 14, or, in the case of Ohio, maybe even 27. That’s our focus: how to
leverage existing resources by combining similar industries where people are
doing similar kinds of work. Our panel is going to focus on how we can create
policy changes, an economic climate, and a set of cooperative ventures that will
provide the platform needed to generate great leverage.”
CLUSTERS AND THE NEXT OHIO ECONOMY: WHAT IS NEEDED
Lavea Brachman
Greater Ohio Policy Center
Ms. Brachman, executive director of the Greater Ohio Policy Center,
whose office is located in Columbus, said that she is also a non-resident senior
fellow at the Brookings Institution, where she has worked to identify a structure
for policy reforms in Ohio. She said that this has necessarily meant working in
partnership with not only the state government, but also with local governments,
metro areas, and regions. “While state participation is necessary for economic
development,” she said, “it’s not sufficient.”
Ms. Brachman said that if regional economies and “metros” are the
economic drivers of the 21st century, and if cluster development is a promising
strategy, and if anchor institutions are important sources for growing clusters,
then Ohio should be well positioned. However, she averred that the picture is
more mixed, especially as applied to transitional economies. I believe we will
prevail, but today I want to explore the premises, and some barriers.”
Putting a “cluster growth” policy into action, she said, begins with a
place-based approach, aligning multiple players with “intense knowledge about
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60 BUILDING THE OHIO INNOVATION ECONOMY
the sectors.” The application of a cluster strategy in the context of transitional
economies must be paired with a broader economic restructuring.
The Greater Ohio Policy Center, Ms. Brachman said, thought of itself
as the “smart growth” organization, with a mission of “promoting public policy
to grow Ohio’s economy and improve the quality of life through intelligent land
use.”
Initially, Ms. Brachman said, the group began with a study of sprawl
and urban core revitalization. But when it joined with Brookings Institution’s
Metropolitan Policy Program, it saw that land use challenges could only be
addressed after examining the local economies and determine why they were not
growing. Last February it issued a report, “Restoring Prosperity,” with 39 policy
recommendations, beginning with “Ohio can compete in the next economy.” 11
The report concluded that “metro areas and regions will drive that economy,”
but that substantial improvements in governance must be made if positive
changes are to be affected.
Ms. Brachman offered the working definition of clusters as
“geographic concentrations of interconnected firms and supporting or
coordinated organizations.” She said that a cluster could be an effective tool to
jumpstart the economy, “but it’s not a panacea. Emerging clusters should be
supported only when they can be justified by data.”
Among the general challenges she saw were that “transferring
knowledge is a complicated process,” as is knowing where to intervene and
when to bring products to market. It is difficult to find a fit between university
research strengths and local economic structures, a problem that “can’t be solved
entirely by a cluster approach.” Finally, it is difficult to generate win-win
strategies that can both benefit institutions and transform the community.
A Challenging Business Climate
Certain features of Ohio, Ms. Brachman said, made for a challenging
business climate. First, the extent of economic decline, she said, was
“unparalleled.” There is also an unusual diversity of regional economies. The
seven or so major metropolitan areas were all grounded in specific, mostly
different industries: Dayton specialized in autos, Toledo in glass, Youngstown in
rubber, and so on. “We’re sort of stuck with older economies that still exist.
With the layering on top of those older industries, it is harder to identify the key
growing clusters.” It is also a challenge to connect regional economic growth
and the power of the metros with neighborhood revitalization. The cities have
emptied out, leaving high concentrations of poverty. For example the population
of Cleveland dropped from 900,000 to 400,000 between 1950 and 2010, the
population of Cincinnati from 500,000 to 300,000. A disconnect persists
between skill level and job creation, and a fragmentation of government reduces
11
Jennifer Vey et al., “Restoring Prosperity: Greater Ohio and the Brookings Institution,”
Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 2010.
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PROCEEDINGS 61
the possibilities for collaboration. “That makes it difficult to use clusters as the
panacea,” she said.
Ms. Brachman also agreed with Mr. Timken that Ohio is a state with
antiquated governance systems and high costs. “These detract from the
innovation focus we need, from business development, and tends to promote
interlocal competition and ‘poaching’ that undercuts regional competitive
capacity.” She said that 86 percent of states have fewer governments per 100
square miles than Ohio.
The state suffers from a confusing combination of historic factors and
modern sprawl. In the early agricultural economy, county lines were drawn so
that one could travel to the county seat and home again in a horse and buggy
from anywhere in the county in one day. Agrarian economies were more
localized, and not easily compatible with today’s global economy based in metro
regions. Land consumption, or sprawl, has outpaced population growth, and
sprawl without population growth results in more local government.
At the same time, Ms. Brachman added, there are opportunities. For
example, the state’s economic history is defined by pockets of concentrated
industrial activity rooted in the major cities. Because there are seven or eight of
those, they present an opportunity exceeding other states, most of which
(Illinois, Indiana) have only one major city. “Theoretically,” she said, “if the
metro and regional economies are our drivers, we have many of those. We just
have to figure out how to leverage them and return ourselves to a basis where
each of these cities can thrive uniquely. We can also make good use of multiple
anchor institutions rooted by place, such as the University of Cincinnati, the
Uptown Consortium, and University Circle in Cleveland.
The Need for Governance Reform
In planning next steps, Ms. Brachman said, the state needs to be “very
intentional,” beginning by encouraging natural clusters, but also by removing
obstacles, especially through governance reform. “Otherwise these will continue
to undercut our competitiveness and prosperity,” she said. “The role of
governance should be to facilitate, not hinder, cluster growth.”
Ms. Brachman listed several suggested ways to bring about local
governance reform. First, creation of a Governance Reform Commission, which
would collect data and monitor the growth and needs of those governments.
Second, she suggested the creation of a framework for pooling resources
regionally, a form of revenue sharing in which “the state needs to be playing a
much bigger role. We also need to make mergers, consolidation, shared services,
and alternative governance structures more ‘permissive.’” In many cases, she
said, even if mergers of small government entities were shown to be desirable,
as between a city and county. They are not permitted under state law. Finally,
she suggested that more data needs to be collected on local government costs.
All of these steps, she said, must be taken “in the service of creating a more
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62 BUILDING THE OHIO INNOVATION ECONOMY
innovative environment and reducing the costs that undercut our
competitiveness.”
Governments also have a larger role to play in creating a fertile
environment for clusters. This process can begin with public-private
partnerships. Here the private sector needs to lead the way, but public
intervention by government needs to create the right conditions to encourage
cluster growth.
Doing this, Ms. Brachman said, requires a “multilayered” approach,
with public policy restructuring at local, state, and Federal levels, as well as
better and more agile partnerships across organizations and across government,
business, and nonprofit sectors. She offered Pittsburgh as a nearby example, in
its ability to bridge some gaps by creating a regional organization that is “not too
large to function.”
Another way to promote cluster development is to create a culture of
innovation. Key components of such a culture are that it led by the private sector
and promotes a productive blend of competition and cooperation; this would
more closely resemble the collaboration commonly seen in Silicon Valley than
the more hierarchical and secretive behaviors of Route 128 near Boston. This
culture must also remove obstacles and inefficiencies, and encourage public
investments in education and training. Create a culture of innovation is a major
challenge. It may begin with anchor institutions that try hard to leverage their
research capacity. Questions remain about the best ways to generate
commercialize new products.
The Role of Anchor Institutions
The role of anchors, such as universities, in generating new knowledge
is critical in advancing innovation, but universities cannot do this alone. They
have their own challenges, such as decentralization. Also, anchor institutions
may be beneficial at a broad macro level, but many moving parts must be
addressed at local and regional levels, such as knowledge transfer, community
revitalization, and education and training. An emphasis on anchors is consistent
with putting knowledge first, she said, instead of incentive and financial
packages.
When considering the role of anchors in weak market economies, Ms.
Brachman said, community transformation cannot be overlooked while
generating cluster growth. Community transformation is pivotal to economic
transformation—a realization that Akron, Cincinnati, and other cities have faced
fully. The efforts of employers, purchasers, developers, educators, and
neighborhood groups must be fully engaged and coordinated. As an example,
she pointed to the home ownership incentive program of Ohio State University
and forgivable loans for the neighborhood by the University of Akron and Case
Western Reserve.
Ohio, Ms. Brachman continued, is uniquely positioned with multiple
anchor institutions that are rooted by place. These have the potential to bring
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PROCEEDINGS 63
growing positive impact to local economies. This impact can be increased by
linking the anchors with clusters and business growth. As examples she listed
the University of Toledo, University of Akron, University of Cincinnati, OSU,
Case Western Reserve, Wright State, Youngstown State, and Ohio University.
Ms. Brachman said that a recognition that Ohio needs to take a
different approach to economic growth dated roughly from 2005, when a report
by Deloitte was published.12 This report identified several clusters, and while
they were not truly place-based, the ensuing discussion “certainly moved the
concept along.” The report not only identified areas of economic strength, such
as motor vehicles, polymers, and clinical medicine, but also institutions with
crucial roles, such as the Ohio Third Frontier and the Hubs of innovation. While
the seven Hubs, she said, were products of the previous state administration,
their objective of encouraging regional growth by connecting anchors with
downtowns and with promising business clusters was a step “in the right
direction.”
“This kind of economic restructuring and cluster development does not
happen on its own,” Ms. Brachman concluded, “and you need to be thinking
how to organize it for success. It seems to us need that we need to leverage the
best of democracy, and do it both from the top down and the bottom up. Finally,
I’d like to assert that regions are laboratories of democracy, and that they are
best approached by a placed-based strategy. It doesn’t work to just spread
resources around like peanut butter.”
INFRASTRUCTURE FOR THE 21ST CENTURY:
HOW EDA MIGHT HELP
John Fernandez
Economic Development Administration
Mr. Fernandez began by saying he is a native of Ohio, and a former
mayor of Bloomington, Indiana, who understands the challenges of the
Midwestern states and regions from personal experience. He said that President
Obama understands them as well, and is “very committed to the notion of
winning the future by out-innovating, out-educating, and out-building” the
competition. He added that “in my world, the concept of investing in our future
is not at odds with the notion of a sound fiscal policy. It requires tough choices,
it requires prioritization of investments. That’s certainly what all of us have been
charged to do within our own agencies.”
Mr. Fernandez said that for the EDA, which sits within the Department
of Commerce, this charge means “taking hard looks at things that have been
around forever, and may not perform as well as they used to.” The better course,
he said, was “a government that’s actually organized around performance and
around the challenges of the 21st-century economy.”
12
Deloitte.
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64 BUILDING THE OHIO INNOVATION ECONOMY
Mr. Fernandez defined EDA’s role as providing “the ground troops
that try to build up these regional environments.” He said that since its founding
in the 1960s, the EDA had evolved considerably from an economic development
organization focused primarily on basic infrastructure to one that is focused on
how to build an innovation economy. “We talk almost every day about how you
have to have competitive regions if you’re going to have a strong national
innovation agenda. And we have to focus what we do in my agency on the
regions, and on innovation ecosystem development.”
The Power of Regional Collaboration
Mr. Fernandez said that he had been working in economic development
for about 20 years, and that during his time as mayor of Bloomington IN, “I was
involved in the 20th-century economic development game as fully as anybody.”
The shortcoming of the old model, he said, was that it treated economic
development as a zero-sum process. Rather than focusing on the competition in
China or Brazil or other places around the world, “we were competing with
Ohio or Indiana or just down the highway within Indiana. That focus on inter-
state squabbles is really dated.”
If the U.S. is going to win the future, he said, it has to collaborate
regionally. Normally this is done well in the Midwest, he said, but there are
“lapses.” Members of the Great Lakes Commission, he noted, generally
collaborate and pool resources for the benefit of the region. But when fiscal
pressures build, the states may decide to raise taxes a little and suddenly “the
surrounding governors pounce on them and try to steal their businesses because
they now have lower taxes. I think that’s the wrong model. Our country won’t
out-innovate in the long term if we just try to steal from our neighbors.”
From ‘Grant Mill’ to ‘Network Broker’
The way to win the future, he said, is to build an “ecosystem” where
organic companies are born, where new companies thrive, and where long-term
investment can create jobs locally and regionally. EDA is focused on
collaboration models, which means “doing economic development differently. I
tell everyone that we’re trying to move away from being a ‘grant mill’ to being a
‘network broker,’ where our work is to connect people, line up resources, and be
a catalyst in the investments we make.”
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PROCEEDINGS 65
FIGURE 3 A new economic development model.
SOURCE: John Fernandez, Presentation at the April 25-26, 2011, National
Academies Symposium on “Building the Ohio Innovation Economy.”
If the EDA can leverage economic assets on a regional basis, Mr.
Fernandez said, they can help sustain growth. “I don’t think you can be just
about low cost; that only gets you so far. It’s got to be about high talent,
innovation, leverage, and public-private partnerships. Those are the resources
our agency and this administration tries to seed and encourage.” The agency’s
“leverage points” for sustainable and inclusive prosperity are to (1) enhance
regional concentrations, (2) deploy human capital aligned with job pools, (3)
develop innovation-enabling infrastructure, (4) increase spatial efficiency, and
(5) create effective public and civic culture and institutions.
As the agency tries to change course toward more effective innovation,
he said, it develops a framework around jobs and innovation partnerships. EDA
is a small agency, he reminded his audience, with a budget of only about $300
million—a mere “rounding error” for a large agency. “We aren’t going to move
the macro-economic needle of the country’s GDP,” he said. “But what we can
do is be selective and effective with the investments we make. We’ve tried to
target our money at key sectors of innovation ecosystems, to use best practices,
and to use competitions to drive demonstration projects. Included in the Jobs
and Innovation Partnership are the following:
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66 BUILDING THE OHIO INNOVATION ECONOMY
Jobs and Innovation Accelerator Competition.
i6 Green Challenge.
Regional Innovation Acceleration Network.
National Economic Cluster Map.
21st Century Innovation Infrastructure.
Making Selective Investments
For the i6 challenge, Mr. Fernandez said, which is open to proof-of-
concept centers, the Austen Bio-Innovation Institute in Akron was one of the
recent winners. EDA also invested in a modeling simulation pilot project for
advanced manufacturing in the Midwest. “Those are the kinds of selective
investments we want to make that can help demonstrate best practices and be
catalytic. We’ve also learned listening to our stakeholders that you need a lot of
persistence and dedication to get through the maze in applying for Federal
resources. We need an easier interface and from the Federal side a common
framework to bring these fragmented programs together. This is a model the
stakeholders and the customer want.” He said that EDA was working with 15
other Federal agencies on a Jobs Innovation Accelerator, a $30 million
competition for 20 pilot sites to develop locally chosen public-private
partnerships around specific cluster initiatives.
Mr. Fernandez closed by reaffirming that “the solutions we need to
drive innovation in our economy aren’t going to be born in Washington. They’re
going to be born in communities like Cleveland, like my hometown of
Bloomington, Indiana, and other places where the ideas are. That’s why these
bottom-up strategies really matter, and why the work you do every day is
important to the nation’s success at innovation. We look forward to being your
partner in that.”
DISCUSSION
Dr. Lefton affirmed the value of “growing the pie rather than
competing with one another.” This, he said, is a central element of what clusters
are designed to do. “If we create regional, statewide clusters, we can grow the
pie, and that means developing ecosystems and leveraging what we have to our
best advantage.” He agreed with Ms. Brachman’s conclusion that “it may mean
getting rid of some government bureaucracy and divisions that hold back rather
than facilitate cluster development.” He then turned to the example of the
Cleveland Foundation and its role in facilitating cluster development.
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PROCEEDINGS 67
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN OHIO: THE ROLE OF
COMMUNITY FOUNDATIONS
Ronn Richard
Cleveland Foundation
Mr. Richard said he would describe the Cleveland Foundation’s overall
approach, its key programs, and its progress to date. He added that “You may be
surprised by the breadth and depth of our efforts.”
The Cleveland Foundation, he began, was the world’s first community
foundation and Ohio’s largest grant making organization. It was created in 1914,
and since then its assets have grown to $1.9 billion. Last year it disbursed about
$85 million to Greater Cleveland, primarily to nonprofit programs and
organizations. “But we also leveraged a lot of money from national foundations
and provided leadership,” he said, “so I think our results exceed that figure.”
Mr. Richard said that when he arrived at the Cleveland Foundation
from Washington, DC, eight years ago, virtually all of its grants supported
education, social services, and civic affairs. “Those are all wonderful and
important recipients,” he said. “But we felt that a big piece was missing—
economic development. The foundation’s board agreed that if we didn’t do
something about economic development, there might not be an art museum to
give money to in 30 years. So we made this a major priority, if not the major
priority, for the Cleveland Foundation.”
A Shift From Responsive to Proactive
Historically, some two-thirds of the foundation’s grantmaking was
“purely responsive,” he said. “The remainder was proactive, where we would
see a need or opportunity and create something. Today, two-thirds of our grants
are proactive programs that we start. This allows us to make a meaningful
impact on our community, and again, economic development is at the top of the
list.”
The foundation has a multi-pronged approach. One is to increase
Cleveland’s global standing by attracting foreign operations and helping local
companies find new markets overseas. Another tack is to nurture new companies
and growth industries. Toward that end, it plays a significant role in helping
Cleveland gain a stronger position in the advanced energy and bioscience
industries. To accomplish this, it involves itself with “public policy, launching
new programs and organizations, and pursuing strategic partnerships with
existing stakeholders locally, especially our large anchor institutions.”
Mr. Richard said that the foundation’s economic development efforts
are designed to align with important issues facing the country, especially energy,
education, and national security. “And when we strengthen one of those, we
strengthen all of them.” For example, he said, the efforts to strengthen
education, at both local and state levels, also help create a home-grown work
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68 BUILDING THE OHIO INNOVATION ECONOMY
force, which is necessary for the economy to thrive. This work force helps
sustain the talent to staff the military, operate high-tech national security
systems, and staff private sector companies.
A New Focus on Energy
Mr. Richard said that he regarded energy as “the most important issue
facing our country today,” and that advanced energy development was a top
priority because of its direct effects on every major sector, including
transportation, food supply, the environment, and jobs. Given Cleveland’s
manufacturing history and expertise and its location on the Great Lakes, the
region has the potential to assume a leadership position in advanced energy.
“This is a $10 billion industry that’s growing by double digits and creating tens
of thousands of jobs worldwide,” he said. “But we have to act swiftly and boldly
if we’re to win the race and realize the potential of advanced energy.”
Unfortunately, he said, Cleveland is where it is today “because we totally missed
the IT revolution. We cannot afford to miss the next one.” Therefore, the
foundation has been very active in attempting to ensure that Cleveland is “a
green city on a blue lake” and a national player in advanced energy.
To capture this opportunity, the foundation’s board agreed to make
energy a major focus, hiring Richard Stuebi and becoming the “first and only
community foundation out of 717 in the U.S. to have a full-time senior person
for economic development and for energy.” An early project was to create a
map that showed the wind on Lake Erie to be sufficient for a major wind farm.
With partners, it helped erect a windmill in front of the Great Lakes Science
Center “to remind people that there was a new industry a-comin’,” and hired its
first lobbyist, who helped pass a renewable energy portfolio standard, or RPS,
bill in the legislature, which was signed by the governor. With these steps, Mr.
Richard acknowledged, “public policy became important to us.” He added that
because Ohio ranks fourth in the nation in power consumption, policy measures
like an RPS bill, which now requires one-quarter of the state’s energy to come
from renewable sources by 2025, are vitally important.
The foundation also played a key role in the passage of Ohio House
Bill 1, which enables municipalities to create Special Improvement Districts, or
SIDs, for solar energy projects. Cleveland and 16 suburban municipalities
established the first such SID in Ohio, and businesses are also installing solar
projects. Most importantly, he said, the foundation secured backing from the city
and the county to build an offshore wind demonstration project in Lake Erie. In
September 2010, GE, Bechtel, and Cavallo Energy became partners in an initial
20-Mw project. “We hope to have the first turbines in the water by 2013,” he
said, “and, hopefully, we’ll have hundreds if not thousands of turbines in the
lake by 2030.”
The foundation has also worked to create a strong network of support
for the renewables industry. It gave a $3.6 million grant to Case Western
Reserve University to start the Great Lakes Energy Institute, with a focus on
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energy storage. “This is critical to make solar and wind more competitive,” he
said. Foundation support also goes to WIRE-Net to strengthen the nation’s
supply chain for wind energy; to NorTech, a $700,000 grant to help create its
Energy Enterprise initiative; and to the Lake Erie Energy Development
Corporation (LEEDCo), to lead the wind project. The foundation also helped
launch Ohio Cooperative Solar, which is providing solar energy on the rooftops
of major regional anchor institutions.
Support for a Bioscience Industry
Mr. Richard turned to the foundation’s emphasis on the bioscience
industry “that, like energy, has the potential for rapid growth and job creation.”
Along with Cleveland Clinic, University Hospitals, and Case Western Reserve,
the foundation helped launch BioEnterprise, whose mission is to commercialize
biomedical research and launch young companies by connecting them to
investors and expertise. So far, BioEnterprise has helped recruit 100 companies
in Northeast Ohio and attracted more than $1 billion in investment capital. The
foundation also supports BioEnterprise in launching a Health Tech Corridor,
planned as a concentration of biomedical, health care, and other technology
companies hoping to benefit from proximity to health care institutions and
academic centers. The foundation gave a $5 million grant, the largest single
grant in its history, to Case Western Reserve to start the Center for Proteomic
Medicine, and in 2005 helped launch JumpStart, an organization that provides
entrepreneurs with mentors as well as money and financing connections. The
Cleveland Foundation also played a key role in starting a Fund for the Economic
Future, and remains as one of its funders.
A Partnership with Anchor Institutions
The foundation partners with existing anchor institutions to help them
meet their needs and to help the economy. These include Case Western Reserve,
Cleveland Clinic, and University Hospitals. “This is part of our place-based
strategy,” Mr. Richard said. “We think another thing we need to do is help these
large anchor institutions create jobs and spin off companies with their
intellectual property rights and purchasing power of $3 billion a year, most of
which goes outside the state at present. So we’ve been starting a series of new
companies called the Evergreen Cooperative Companies that offer good-paying
jobs to local residents, who also have the opportunity to build an ownership
stake in these companies. The Evergreen Laundry is up and running, the solar
collaborative I mentioned earlier is up and running, and soon we’ll have the
largest commercial greenhouse in the country.”
The foundation has helped start 11 innovative, high-performing schools
with the Cleveland public school system, including the Cleveland School of
Science and Medicine, where he chairs the board. The school has a 100 percent
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70 BUILDING THE OHIO INNOVATION ECONOMY
graduation rate, with many entering top universities, and Mr. Richard hopes that
many will return to Cleveland to work in the anchor institution hospitals.
“We have a long way to go,” Mr. Richard said in summary, “and now
we’re looking at what more we can do, given our balance sheet. We have about
$2 billion, we’re looking to see how we can invest that money in local
institutions and efforts that will give us a good return on investment but also
have a double or triple bottom line for us.” Mr. Richard concluded by
underlining the importance of philanthropy in the campaign for economic
development. “We have wonderful foundations in this region, and they all have
their oar in the water,” he said. “We’re all going in the same direction, and I
hope we’ll really contribute to the success of the public and private sectors.”
DISCUSSION
A questioner asked for a good example of creating a cluster, and Dr.
Lefton conceded that much more is known about the value of clusters than about
how to create them—“especially in places with traditional economies, like
Cleveland and Akron. I would probably point to Pittsburgh as one that is starting
to take hold.”
Mr. Fernandez added that in addition to the well known examples of
Silicon Valley, Research Triangle Park in North Carolina, and others, a
successful life sciences and medical device cluster was started early in the 1980s
in Indiana and has since grown in healthy fashion. The cluster is driven by an
organization called Biocrossroads, a public-private partnership. Likewise, in
Kansas is a strong aviation and advanced manufacturing cluster being driven by
a several chambers of commerce. He said other solid examples are found, some
of them in unexpected places, such as the strong cluster around Virginia Tech
that was created with the help of tobacco settlement money. He said the EDA is
now mapping many of these, which could make it easier to link to organizations
that are building successful cluster initiatives.
Investing Across Borders
Dr. Lefton asked what the optimal size of a cluster is, and whether the
area from Pittsburgh to Cleveland and Akron is too large for a viable cluster.
Mr. Fernandez said he thought size was less an issue than “some of these archaic
jurisdictional borders that get in the way of collaboration. The economy doesn’t
follow those borders, and yet they often constrain us.” What the Federal
government could do, he said, through competition and tools, is to “give local
officials some ‘cover’ for co-investing with their neighbors. We all know we
don’t really care much about borders on maps, especially the private sector, but
when you try to co-invest, it is really hard.” For example, the mayor of
Bloomington, he said, would be chastised for putting money in another county,
even when it helped the region. He said that foundations could help overcome
such boundaries issues.
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Robert Schmidt, of Cleveland Medical Devices, said that one barrier to
collaboration was the Ohio code that controls rights to discoveries. This is
interpreted differently by and within different universities, he said, but it is often
considered to mean that any invention that grows out of an activity within a
university, even the use of a library or a laboratory, would be owned by the
university. He said this had sometimes prompted his company to takes its
business outside Ohio to conduct testing rather than use instrumentation in an
Ohio university that might thereby claim ownership. He asked whether this law
could be revised so that cluster activity could be promoted.
Dr. Lefton said that in northeast Ohio virtually all universities have a
liberal policy that encourages tech transfer by leaving a “piece of the action” to
the original investigator and a little to the university, and fosters collaboration
between either of them and private business. “I think you’ll be seeing a
modernization of thinking within universities to allow for smoother tech
transfer. It’s clearly part of Governor Kasich’s plan for universities, and also
part of ours.”
