For Shirley Collier, the decision to travel to her native Gulf Coast last year to assist in the region’s recovery from the devastation left in the BP oil spill’s wake was easy.
But little did she know that she would wind up applying for a U.S. government grant in the midst of starting a 501(c)3 with colleagues that was created to help nurture economic development through entrepreneurship in regions that need to address negative job growth.
“It was last Aug. 25 — ironically enough, five years to the day after Hurricane Katrina — for the International Economic Development Council to call after I volunteered,” she said, of her visit to Harrison County, Miss., home to resort towns like Biloxi and Gulfport.
Shirley Collier and Mary Ellen Duncan are part of a team that saw the need for economic development services in underserved parts of the country.
She was part of a group that also included economic development executives from communities in Illinois and South Dakota. “Seven people from the White House ended up observing us,” she said, “and we worked together to brainstorm about how to start businesses and juice up the Gulf Coast economy.
“And it looked like a business,” Collier said — which it now is. It’s called techGrowth.
Digging the Treasure Trove
Though she’s from the Gulf Coast region, Collier has lived in Maryland for many years and found herself “surprised at how little they knew about entrepreneurship and tech transfer” in Mississippi.
“There are some intelligent, hardworking people down there, but like the people in most communities, they know what they know,” she said. “They have a tech transfer office at Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, but that’s mandated by Congress. They don’t do much outreach.
“They also don’t have,” said Collier, “an understanding of how different entities work in conjunction with each other.”
The experience just underscored what Collier has learned over the years.
“We live in a bubble [in the Baltimore-Washington region],” she said. “There is a treasure trove of intellectual property and patents/inventions that are available to anyone in the country from the federal government. They can see what’s being developed at Stanford, MIT or the University of Maryland.”
That knowledge led Collier and her colleague Wayne Swann (the former director of the Office of Technology Transfer at The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory) to launch techGrowth, the mission of which is to help economically challenged regions with strategic planning via technology entrepreneurship models, notably tech transfer.
“Seventy-five percent of the infrastructure in Mississippi has not been rebuilt since Katrina,” she said. “The state has experienced the triple whammy of the hurricane, the national banking crisis and then the BP oil spill. They’re desperate for help.
“They’ve had various people come in to help,” Collier said, “but many others are paid consultants. We’re different because we are doing this as volunteers.”
Innovation Nation
Swann, former Howard Community College (HCC) President Mary Ellen Duncan and Virginia Kirk, former director of online instruction at HCC, are part of techGrowth with Collier. Swann had been teaching tech transfer classes at HCC and heard about a $2 billion grant (techGrowth is part of a four-state consortium that is seeking a $25 million slice) from the U.S. Department of Labor (DoL).
“[The DoL] wanted us to come up with creative solutions to put people back to work,” he said, “and techGrowth is trying to assist in tapping the significant resources in innovation that reside in government labs and universities. In U.S. universities alone, there are 20,000 new innovations each year. It could be software, hardware, medical,” etc. “Other parts of the country only have 10% of what we have here.
“There are many ‘wannabe’ entrepreneurs and a lot of companies that want to insert a new innovation into their current company,” Swann said. “They need to know that they don’t need to have the idea for the technology in the first place. It could be someone else’s and already patented.
Therefore, companies need to be “intraprenuerial,” — but most are not, since they’re focusing on the next quarter.
“But it pays to have that spirit,” Swann said. “For every high tech product, you have high tech jobs, plus all of the support jobs and the economic impact on the surrounding community.
“The problem is,” he said, “that these companies don’t know how to go about it. That’s where we come in. What Shirley, Mary Ellen, Virginia and I want to do is facilitate helping those regions and companies as they try to capture innovation resources.”
It’s only appropriate that Duncan coaches college presidents on developing innovation skills, given her previous career before she co-founded Columbia-based Synergies Consulting Group.
“It’s absolutely necessary to avoid complacency,” Duncan said. “Not only do we need new entrepreneurs, but we also need that type of thinking within existing organizations; not just companies, but government and education, as well.
“I think the community colleges are relatively new [to this arena],” she said, “but one of the reasons they’ve been successful is that they’ve been more responsive to community needs.
“That spirit,” said Duncan, noting techGrowth’s affiliation with the National Association of Community College Entrepreneurship and Babson University, which is known for educating entrepreneurs, “needs to be kept alive. The same skills needed for the entrepreneur in the business world are also important in government and education.”
Integrating Silos
A key idea behind techGrowth is breaking down silos, Collier said.
“There are many entrepreneurs in Howard County, but seldom do they unite to solve a problem,” she said, “and that’s the wrong way to impact massive change. We want to bring stakeholders together to develop a common agenda, common language, and agreed upon goals and commitments. That’s far more than most people think about.”
“Taking it to the next level” also would include infrastructure that oversees diverse entities and holds them accountable to produce results, Collier said. “We want to produce high-value, innovative products and high-paying jobs so everyone wins.”
This isn’t all talk. There are models to follow, including the concept of Collective Impact. The movement, which was studied at Stanford University, analyzed large, charitable organizations, such as the Gates Charitable Foundation and the Pew Charitable Trust, to learn what was worked and what didn’t.
“We want to tap into that knowledge from Stanford with a Deloitte & Touche-type study about collective leadership,” she said. “Our idea is about breaking down silos in communities by using concepts gleaned from multiple disciplines to get a cross-sector understanding of what’s necessary to create sustainable prosperity.”
