Which Road is Ahead for Your Efforts to Support Regional Innovation?

You don't need to be told how much things have changed over the past couple of years. Nor how it has shocked your regional economy, perhaps even your own household - research shows more than 50 percent of Americans are directly, negatively affected by the Great Recession. The Great Recession has ushered in great change. Great change on an unprecedented, global scale.

We can call this recession great because its most severe repercussions emanate from structural changes at the foundation of our economy. Long established ways of doing business are being rendered irrelevant in the wake of this restructuring. Strangely, it seems many of the approaches to economic development being attempted to spur growth, however, haven't changed. Those still rallying for more recruitment/retention/massive construction strategies to encourage recovery are clinging to memories of past success.

They aren't alone. There are universities and colleges, states and local governments saying returning to the former status quo would be fine if we just had more money or more federal support. And perhaps we could go back if we had the money. But is that what we really want? Is the status quo what technology-based economic development (TBED) — strategies to encourage regional economic growth through innovation and science — is about?

Are the old ways of doing economic development really the best route to sustaining U.S. competitiveness? Or, do we want our federal government, our companies, our states, our regions and our universities cooperatively headed down a new road, working in new, more promising directions based on science, technology and innovation?

The great American poet Robert Frost told us about two diverging roads a long time ago - nearly one hundred years ago, in fact. He took the less travelled road "and that has made all the difference."

And it will for us, too.

Is your TBED agenda or regional innovation strategy ready for the journey?

SSTI's 14th Annual Conference, Accelerating Innovation: The Road Ahead for Tech-based Economic Development, begins with the belief that you want your region to choose and be prepared for taking that less travelled road. We must have the right tools to clear the path on occasion, the resilience to absorb the road's bumps and surprising turns, and the patience necessary when the journey seems long.

This is a conference of opportunity, of exciting new thinking, of stimulating possibilities. And it is a conference like no other for the nation's organizations and individuals committed to accelerating regional innovation.

Read on. Register soon. Prepare for the trip. Safe travels.

See you Sept 14-16 in Pittsburgh!