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Prosperity in today’s world economy depends on innovation: being first
to market products and services based on new knowledge and the ability
to apply that knowledge. Illinois has great
potential to be prosperous and make enormous contributions to our state,
national, and international communities.
The capacity to discover, create and market depends heavily on Illinois’ prowess in
science and technology, and upon an ecosystem of public programs and
practices which facilitate commercializing technology.
Illinois’
current practices and programs, taken as a whole, fail to adequately
serve an innovation agenda, and in many cases work against it.
Instead of assigning blame for Illinois’ current dysfunction, we need look
for partners with whom to pursue a
Smart Agenda™
([1])
for our state, one which outlines the basic things state government must
do. We also should
collaborate with other states in the Midwest to compete as an economic
region. Once the
Smart Agenda is adopted and
adhered to consistently, Illinois will:
1.
Manage its fiscal affairs with integrity, fund operations out of
current revenues, and use general obligation bond financing only for
major long term projects and true crisis situations.
2.
Upgrade and maintain its physical transportation and
communications infrastructure, including the provision of accessible
broadband access state wide.
3.
Conduct permitting and other business regulatory processes in a
manner that is both welcoming of new / expanded enterprises and as
capable, timely and transparent as any in the world.
4.
Provide an ecosystem of people, capital, and organizations,
including a competitive package of support programs for science-based
startups, so that Illinois can consistently translate its above
average research capabilities into commercially viable new businesses
and keep them here.
5.
Educate its students to achieve reading, math and science scores
on a par with the top 10% of students in the world’s industrialized
nations; in the process:
•
Eliminate geographic and race-based disparities in funding of public
schools
•
Establish an educational
standard for innovation skills development through problem-based
learning
6.
Maintain vocational, 4-year, and community college curricula in
fundamental manufacturing, processing, building, and trade skills to
ensure a workforce with constantly renewed skill sets required in the
service of a diverse innovation based economy
7.
Become the first US state in
which the African American and Latino portion of the workforce engaged
in science-based enterprises matches the proportion of those population
sectors statewide.
8.
Fund state schools of higher education so that Illinois is widely recognized as among the top
5 states in the nation for basic and applied research in agriculture,
the life sciences, physical sciences, and computer/communications
technology.
The following paragraphs explain why each of these eight elements
is needed for
Illinois to
reach its potential:
1.
Fiscal integrity.
Healthy finances provide certainty that state will perform
necessary tasks as a matter of course—providing for infrastructure,
education, and essential state services—and that businesses and citizens
will not be subjected to chronic fiscal fire drills or short-changed on
basic government functions.
2.
Infrastructure and broadband.
Maintenance of public infrastructure is essential to the economic
well-being of any jurisdiction.
Broadband, the key to effective communications within communities
and between businesses, is now an essential component of public
infrastructure; it needs to be extended state-wide.
3.
Regulatory responsiveness.
Illinois’ business-facing regulatory apparatus
is purely reactive, unacceptably slow, and negatively affected by
political meddling, costing the state jobs and prosperity.
We need instead to seek out companies proactively, streamline
regulatory processes, properly staff them, and eliminate political
interference unrelated to regulatory standards.
4.
Support for startups.
Study after study has documented the fact that although Illinois possesses above average research
capabilities, it is chronically below-average at translating that
prowess into new companies, and keeping the companies we create from
drifting off to other states.
Incentive programs for small companies must be created so that we
stop losing firms to the coasts, and to states like
Michigan, Wisconsin and Indiana.
5.
World-class education.
Today’s students will compete not just with workers from other
parts of the U.S., but with those around the
world. According to recent
test surveys documented by the National Academies of Science, American
students’ test scores chronically lag those of other developed
countries, placing in one survey in the lowest 10% of math and lowest 5%
of science scores.
In order to give Illinois’ students a chance to compete
effectively we must raise their abilities compete with the top students
internationally. For this
to happen, we must:
•
Eliminate the well documented disparities based on race and geography,
so that where or into which race a student is born no longer
predetermines his or her opportunity for a quality education.
•
Teach students how to solve problems in teams.
According to Chris Koch, Illinois’ State Superintendent of Schools,
there is abundant literature validating the proposition that when
students can see the application of what they are learning, they learn
to create solutions and learn core subject matter better and faster.
6. The manufacture,
processing, and delivery of high value, innovative goods and services
require constant training and re-training for necessary trade skills.
Only by providing a workforce with constantly refreshed
capabilities can Illinois avoid loss of manufacturing processing jobs
that other Midwestern states have experienced, and compete on a global
scale.
7.
Workforce diversity.
Reliance on a workforce for innovation which draws only on
suburban white and Asian students guarantees that a huge percentage of
the talents, skills, and energy of our population will be lost or
employed in low skilled jobs.
Illinois cannot afford
that kind of internal brain drain, and our state can gain a huge
advantage by bringing all our citizens into the innovation-focused
talent pool.
8.
Funding basic and applied
research. The most
prosperous regions of the
US and beyond—other than those
relying on vast oil resources—are jurisdictions that have mastered the
ability to translate discovery into new products and services.
Fundamental to that process is leadership in basic and applied
research, historically Illinois strength.
[1]
iBIO has trademarked the term
Smart Agenda, and
purchased the URL www.smartagenda.org for eventual use by and
pro bono transfer to a coalition supporting the agenda and/or to
the State of Illinois itself for use
as a marketing tool.
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