Citizens Agenda: Knowledge Economy

Philadelphia’s a great place to get sick in.

It boasts a world-class cluster of teaching hospitals, medicals schools, research institutions and drug companies.

And it’s a great place to be smart in. It has a glittering roster of 88 colleges and universities of all sizes and flavors.

The beneficiaries of these clusters go beyond just people who need a diagnosis or a college credit.

More than any other American city, Philadelphia relies on higher education and health as the core of its job base. And the sectors deliver, employing a diverse workforce. They also serve as international magnets for talent, bringing smart people to live here. And these institutions can serve as engines of renewal for struggling neighborhoods.

With all these marquee institutions, Philadelphia should be a global leader in the “knowledge economy,” which runs on brains and innovations, not brawn and mass production.

But it isn’t, quite. In one recent study, Philadelphia didn’t finish in the top 10 nationally on any measure of how well a region converts local research into patents, spin-off businesses or jobs. The region is, in the phrase of one business leader, “aggressively middle of the pack.”

A lot of factors may explain why a region has fuzzy reception for the innovative signals its research institutions emit. But business leaders around here agree on the biggest problem: The region’s workforce needs to get more educated and skilled.

As a whole, the region’s educational attainment is solid, but the city proper ranks 92d out of 100 cities. Knowledge economy employers are drawn to regions with deep pools of skilled labor. If the education gap leads them to shun Philadelphia, that could create a classic vicious cycle: Smart graduates of local colleges will look elsewhere for careers because they, too, seek regions with deep job pools in their fields.

In sum, the Philadelphia region has much to work with in building its knowledge economy, but it also has much work to do:

 

Why it matters: 
The city’s low educational attainment hampers the region’s ability to compete in a global knowledge economy. This factor keeps the region from benefiting fully from its wealth of research institutions.

 

What to do: 
Sustain an intense, community-wide focus on ensuring that local youth get at least an associate or technical degree. Ease the path back to college for those who took credits then dropped out; the Community College of Philadelphia is vital to this goal, as is support from those who employ these adult students. Ramp-up already strong efforts around the Three E’s: luring top students to Enroll in local colleges, coaxing them to Engage with Philly while here, and helping them find Employment after they graduate.

 

 

Cultivate Ivy: 
Create a mayoral Office of Universities and Colleges. This liaison would identify needs, advise colleges on their community-development efforts, and help with talent attraction and technology transfer.

 

Big “Mo” on campus: 
Strengthen the successful CampusPhilly operation, which has become a national model for executing the Three E’s. It needs more help from business in finding internships for students, a key piece of the strategy.

 

Young and restless: 
Bolster the parallel effort to court 20-somethings with degrees. Create forums to listen to this cohort’s goals, needs and ideas. Invite them to participate meaningfully in government and civic institutions.

 

Be Select-ive: 
Increase government (particularly suburban) support for Select Greater Philadelphia’s work to promote Philadelphia as an organic economic region stretching from Princeton to Wilmington. Believing in, and acting as, that region is the best way to compete in a global economy.

 

Trio harmony: 
Urge the governors in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware to encourage such tristate thinking and to back regional knowledge economy initiatives.

 

Laws of attraction: 
At City Hall, develop a clearer business-attraction strategy, focused on three or four promising sectors. Assign a Commerce Department staffer to each sector to execute the strategy.

 

 

It’s gross, all right: 
Speed up the pace of cuts in the city’s gross-receipts tax, a huge obstacle to knowledge industry start-ups. Address other tax and regulatory obstacles.

 

Thin the alphabet soup: 
Reduce overlap and confusion among workforce development   programs.

 

It’s the networks: 
Establish more forums (in one report’s parlance, “clubhouses”) where researchers, entrepreneurs, corporate leaders and financiers can rub elbows and trade ideas.

 

Incubate, incubate: 
Strengthen existing public-private partnerships to provide lab and office space, seed money and transition funding to “spinout” businesses that turn academic research into patents, products and jobs.

 

Enterprising eggheads: 
On campus, encourage more entrepreneurial thinking. College leaders should make it an institutional priority to inject new knowledge into the region’s economic bloodstream. Temple University is on the case here.

 

Venture forth: 
Better exploit the region’s research strength, and its proximity to Wall Street, to improve its weak supply of venture capital to support start-ups.