academic community – have tended to emphasize programs with the state, county and municipal governments.
Fourth, timing. In at least fi ve places in his contribution, Professor Feller referred to 1980 as roughly a watershed date as the beginning of a new era for government interest in technology-intensive activities, university incubators, publicly supported venture capital funds and university–
industry–government R&D partnerships. I believe that 1980 had another special signifi cance in Greater Cleveland: it was the beginning of what became the brilliant Cleveland comeback, a phenomenon which endured roughly from 1980 to 1996, the year of the Cleveland Bicentennial celebration. This was a 17-year period during which there was much national doom and gloom but the Cleveland public/private partnership model became a national and, indeed, international standard to which to repair.
As I indicated earlier, it is my belief that universities had a relative minor role in the early part of that comeback period, and that their role has increased over time, with recent acceleration.
Fifth, regionalism. Like the business community, academia is typically unshackled by arbitrary political boundaries such as city or county lines of demarcation, and this freedom from geographic restraint has enabled colleges and universities to contribute to the growing forces of regionalism as a factor in economic development through entrepreneurship.
Sixth, NOCHE. NOCHE is an example of this regional approach. Way back in the 1950s leaders in Cleveland’s business community established an organization which has expanded over the intervening 50 years to become known today as NOCHE (the Northeast Ohio Council on Higher Education). NOCHE’s board of trustees consists of the presidents of 23 colleges and universities in a 13-county area of Northeast Ohio and a like number of business leaders. NOCHE’s current strategies include advocacy for the role of higher education in the region, workforce development and technology transfer: three important aspects of economic development.
NOCHE in turn has been physically housed and has collaborated, with TeamNEO, a business-supported marketing organization that works closely with the state, and various counties and municipalities in the region to stimulate economic development through entrepreneurship.
Seventh, regional economics. If we go back to the early 1980s, we note that one aspect of the Cleveland comeback was the emergence on the economic scene of what is now the Center for Regional Economic Issues at the Case Weatherhead School of Management. While this important entity for collection and analysis of regional economic data was sired by a foundation, The Cleveland Foundation, rather than government, in fact the concept of REI, and indeed for several of its early years its landlord,
was The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. Interestingly the fi rst home of REI was the College of Urban Affairs at Cleveland State University (CSU).
REI moved on from there to the Fed, and ultimately to the Weatherhead School at Case. But even after REI left the Urban College at CSU, that college continued to assemble and utilize large quantities of important regional economic data on its own. I understand that today REI and the Urban College at Cleveland State are collaborating on certain projects in support of economic development through entrepreneurship, and I believe that this is a wonderful development for entrepreneurship support in the region.
Eighth, technology transfer. Another important, indeed some would say crucial, issue involving government/academic collaboration for the benefi t of economic development through entrepreneurship is technology transfer.
Professor Feller has referred to the Bayh–Dole Act, which gave universities the right to patent inventions that emerge from federally sponsored research;
this very important federal legislation has stimulated various universities to upgrade substantially their technology transfer capability. As a longtime suffering member of the Case Board’s Technology Transfer Committee, I was ecstatic when Dr Wagner, Case’s interim president, made the decision a few years ago to invest heavily in this function and bring in some real experts. The result has been dramatically positive, and has led to a number of effective partnerships in the local entrepreneurial arena.
Ninth, miscellaneous. I would like to state three short points that I believe are relevant to my assignment. My recent experience as Chairman of Ohio Governor Bob Taft’s Commission on Higher Education & the Economy leads me to say that leaders of higher education, that is, key presidents of various colleges and universities around the state of Ohio, seem more interested now than at any previous time in history in using their institutions to stimulate and support economic development.
A new day has also arrived in the interest of philanthropic foundations (perhaps, to some extent, in lieu of government) in economic development.
This emerging realization of an extremely effective use of philanthropic dollars is, I would venture to say, somewhat historic. A dramatic illustration is the proposed $30 million Fund for Our Economic Future which was recently announced by a group of 28 foundations in a nine-county area of Northeast Ohio to promote and sustain economic development in the region. This wonderful new development was characterized in a Cleveland Plain Dealer headline as follows: ‘Private groups take on a role usually played by government’.
While the emphasis here has been on universities, we should all remember that, in this area of government/academia partnerships to enhance economic
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development, the community colleges of the state are playing a tremendous role. The catalytic contributions of Lorain County Community College and Cuyahoga Community College to economic development through entrepreneurship are well known locally.
So I would say overall that partnerships between government and academic institutions, in partnership with business and philanthropic foundations, have played an important role in the region’s economic development through entrepreneurism over the last 25 years, and the potential for the future is immense. This, along with the revitalization of REI, is exciting. In a time of economic doldrums, it is a strong source of optimism.