Key Thrust Areas in Oregon's New Innovation Plan

Oregon InC's "2006 Innovation Plan" includes the following recommendations to the Governor:

-Support Oregon's food processing industry, with attention to helping producers find new ways to develop, package and market Oregon products.

-Strengthen Oregon's effort to generate electric power through wave generation on the coast.

-Support technology-transfer to expand research capabilities at Oregon's universities and bring new technologies to market.

-Research new concepts and train needed workers in Oregon's manufacturing sector.

-Establish a second "Signature Research Center," this one for clean energy, bio-based products and other emerging opportunities. This new bio-based Center will also promote green buildings, and help Oregon companies take advantage of other emerging opportunities that will replace petrochemical-based products.

Read more here.

A Lesson from Telford, UK

By 2026, Telford will be a city of more than 200,000 people with a workforce of 110,000. These workers will be part of a thriving economy driven by new technology and communications. Telford itself will have become an “electronic city”, rekindling its reputation for innovation and be at the forefront of key business sectors including advanced engineering, IT and building technology.

And the district centres of the new town will be successful “niche economies” in their own right.

This is the blueprint for the economic future of the town according to Vision 2026 - a document from the Telford & Wrekin Strategic Partnership which lays out the development - cultural, social and financial - of Telford.

But is it pie in the sky? Or could it actually become a reality? Ray Prior, chairman of Telford Economic Development Partnership, believes it is an aspirational document but believes its aims are achievable.

Read more here.

A survey of European and U.S. businesses conducting significant research and development (R&D) projects shows that the biggest factor in their decisions on where to locate is proximity to growing markets.

Cost is not main factor when companies decide where to locate R&D projects.

"R&D is growing everywhere, but it's growing faster in emerging countries," said Merrilea Mayo, of the National Academies, a sponsor of the survey, along with the E.M. Kauffman Foundation, Georgia Tech Research Corporation and Emory University.

The survey Here or There? was released September 22 and covers responses by more than 200 European and U.S. multinational firms in 15 industries. According to the survey's authors, the business press too often concentrates on the cost-basis for locating R&D facilities, but that criterion is not of first importance to multinational companies.

Read more here.

Taking a Note from the Bay Area on Innovation

For many, the word ‘innovation’ is synonymous with technology and California’s Bay Area – loaded with research institutions, human capital and entrepreneurial assets. A new report takes a look at innovation initiatives happening in that area and around the world, asking the question, “How are we linked to other economies by cooperation as well as competition?”

The report, The Innovation Edge: Meeting the Global Competitive Challenge, is a collection of essays on the economic challenges brought on by the emergence of China, India and other markets throughout the world. Leading with the title essay, The Innovation Edge also includes pieces on “The Emerging Global Labor Market,” and “Services Innovation as a Competitive Response to Globalization.”

To download The Innovation Edge: Meeting the Global Competitive Challenge, published by the Bay Area Economic Forum, visit: www.bayeconfor.org/pdf/InnovationEdgeSept2006.pdf

New Book: Entrepreneurial Imperative

A timely, new, spirited book, The Entrepreneurial Imperative: How America's Economic Miracle Will Reshape The World-And Change Your Life (HarperCollins), adamantly shows how America can lead itself on a secure path for long-term expansion, primarily by supporting its number one, but underutilized, resource: entrepreneurial capitalism.

Author Carl Schramm, the president and CEO of the nation's largest foundation to promote entrepreneurship, The Kauffman Foundation, has a vision of seeing entrepreneurial capitalism reign in the United States and abroad.

The Entrepreneurial Imperative emphatically:

-Explains why America is so good at entrepreneurship and details how we can increase the number of start-ups and move the economy further away from depending on the failed trifecta of big-government, big-business, big-union.

-Shows how exporting entrepreneurship overseas is vital to America's continued economic growth, opening markets abroad while increasing a healthy competition at home. He shows why spreading entrepreneurship must be a pillar of our foreign policy - above military and political solutions.

-Details how we're in danger of stifling our entrepreneurial economy and shows what the government should do to nurture it.

-Identifies the crucial role start-ups play in Corporate America, detailing a symbiotic push-and-take relationship between the younger, brighter, eager rookies and the conservative, bureaucracy-riddled industry leaders.

-Complains about business schools and universities failing miserably. Schramm says universities should teach courses on entrepreneurship for non-business majors. Schools should also be more entrepreneurial themselves, owning and operating businesses, especially high-tech businesses, much like medical schools own hospitals.

Connecting Innovation and Leadership in Business

At a recent Wharton roundtable discussion on leadership and innovation, Wharton management professor Michael Useem, event moderator, initiated discussion by posing a general question: How are leadership and innovation linked? "How exactly do we put those two together? How do we lead in a way that generates innovation?" he asked, describing the synergy as "a kind of high-octane fuel we ought to get as much of as we can."

He then asked the panelists -- who had come to campus to participate in Wharton's 125th anniversary celebration -- to describe a single factor that they feel is most critical to innovation in their industry. C. Robert Henrikson, chairman and CEO of global insurer MetLife, focused on marketing. "In our industry, the winners will be determined because of marketing. By that I mean true marketing, not sales support, which is what the insurance industry is about in the United States." Executives beyond the sales team, such as lawyers and financial officers, need to meet with customers regularly. All parts of the organization must have a sense of the customers' business to anticipate their needs and reach out with innovative ideas, he said.

Read more here.

Selling in China

China's 1.3 billion consumers are at a crossroads. They are embracing new economic ideas and habits, and devouring goods that have long been unavailable, unaffordable or forbidden. At the same time, they are part of a culture and an economic system that remain quite different from those of developed countries.

In this special report, experts from Wharton and Boston Consulting Group offer insights on how Chinese consumers are evolving as the market develops; what companies need to know about navigating China's convoluted sales and distribution systems; and the advantages emerging Chinese companies have over Western competitors, even as these firms face their own difficulties in entering the global marketplace. Also, Deepak Advani, chief marketing officer of Lenovo, and Hal Sirkin, senior vice president of BCG and leader of the firm's Global Operations Practice, discuss the advantages of tailoring products and messages to local markets in China.