Brewster McCracken for Austin Mayor

THE SEVEN STEPS TO SECURING AUSTIN’S ECONOMIC FUTURE

Leadership in the 21st Century Economy won’t happen by accident.

In the late 1980’s, Austin created the model for how a city can establish leadership in the economic sectors of the future. The architect for this model was University of Texas Business School Dean George Kozmetsky.

Here are seven specific elements of Kozmetsky’s Austin Model that Austin used for MCC and SEMATECH – and that we can use again to lead in clean energy and biotech/life sciences:

Commercialize university technology

This starts with expanding the technology commercialization partnership between the University of Texas and the City of Austin through the Austin Technology Incubator (ATI). ATI converts cutting edge U.T. research into innovative Austin-based companies. In his book Academic Entrepreneurship, Scott Shane writes that nationally, this has proved to be a particularly effective strategy for catalyzing new companies in biotech and life sciences. The new Bioscience Incubator jointly created by U.T. and the City of Austin already has five innovative companies. Austin and UT have also created dynamic clean energy companies at the incubator such as ActaCell, Atonometrics and Solar Array Ventures.

Create research and development consortia

By bringing together the nation’s public and private sectors leaders in a SEMATECH-scale initiative, we can take on clean energy’s and medicine’s toughest challenges. This is what Austin and the Environmental Defense Fund are currently doing through the Pecan Street Project. Bringing a medical school to Austin is likely a critical prerequisite for pursuing such a strategy eventually in biotech/life sciences.

Recruit new companies and retain existing companies.

Dr. Kozmetsky wrote that this was a key element to building a technology cluster. Paul Krugman recently won a Nobel Price in Economics for his research demonstrating how regions have established economic success through recruiting and retaining companies and providing targeted incentives– particularly for manufacturing companies. Scott Shane writes that a local manufacturing base is a critical element in creating a successful technology cluster. During an economic recruitment trip to Silicon Valley in July, I personally observed how important Austin’s recruitment of Samsung’s new 300 mm fab has been to attracting additional semiconductor companies and talent to Austin.

Create infrastructure for innovation

– such as research and development labs and research parks. Successful models include SEMATECH, Stanford Research Park and the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL).

Build a local market

Economist Jon Hockenyos observes that creating a local market is increasingly important to building a successful economic sector. This is particularly true in clean energy, where cities, states and public utilities can promote job creation through purchases of solar, wind and energy storage. New Mexico has catapulted itself into a national solar energy leader by aggressively implementing such a strategy.

Empower people to achieve opportunity through job training

- just as Austin did in the SEMATECH era with the Austin Project and that Temple, TX is doing now in biotech. Such initiatives are critical to ensuring that the entire community shares in the opportunities we work together to create and that we have a workforce with the training to work in these emerging sectors.

Practice unity and “intense cooperation”

Unity was a key factor in Austin winning MCC and SEMATECH against far more established rivals. The city’s business, university and political leadership pulled together in a display of “intense cooperation” (as a University of Texas analysis later described it). A researcher hired by Philadelphia to study Austin’s high tech success concluded that Austin was able to “offer MCC what none of the more established tech capitals could match. To wit: a whole community—economic, intellectual, and political—that would shape itself to support MCC and its industry.”

It was one of Austin’s finest hours. By working together, we achieved things as a community that made us a model for the country - and created opportunity locally for a generation.

By rekindling Austin’s legendary cooperation and community-wide sense of mission, we can lead again in the innovation sectors of the future.

Excerpted from Brewster McCracken’s Nov. 17, 2008 Crow’s Nest, “Seven Steps to Securing Austin’s Economic Future.”