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Space Coast Becoming an Innovation Hub |
By: Neil Hamilton
Efforts to attract a young, educated demographic, which is occurring at an increasing rate throughout the country, generally vary by architecture. City planners envision a possible trigger to downtown revitalization, economic developers hope for an addition to their recruitment toolbox and young professionals themselves see enhanced social opportunities. Missing all too often in such efforts, unfortunately, is a responsiveness to local industry needs.
In the population-driven South, the focus inevitably and justifiably has been on service-sector activities. Almost one in two current healthcare workers in Brevard, for example, will have retired by 2025, so a similar share of those currently educating our children will likewise need to be replaced.
These are issues that have been raised before and, fortunately, Brevard’s development community is more than on top of it. Yet we are also going one step further and augmenting demand-driven young professional recruitment actions with an approach offering the opportunity to ensure continuing economic competitiveness for the area. The irony is that the opportunity is born out of a notion most of us have come to dread: globalization.
Typically branded by reports of low value-added manufacturing plants seeking lower costs and cheaper labor overseas, a less visible aspect of globalization is the tendency for higher-level economic activities such as innovation, design, finance and media to “cluster” in a relatively small number of locations. It is an interesting, and by now, probably over-used concept that is nevertheless supported by evidence and example. Brevard County, if not already so, is fast becoming one of those locations to which innovation migrates.
Consider the local electronics sector. While wildly popular to discard electronics as a declining, possibly even eclipsed industry that has lost almost all of its activity to emerging economies, research suggests Brevard has leveraged considerable labor advantages in the sector into an extremely high-wage, design-oriented industry that is proving more than sustainable in the face of global competition. Leaving behind the production of high-volume, commoditized devices, local companies are entering the more lucrative world of rapid prototyping and niche product runs, enabled primarily by cutting-edge engineers and a concentration of technical labor. The progress represents a natural economic evolution and movement up the value chain, leaving other nations to do what we did 10 or 15 years ago. Critically, while the nation’s electronics sector has languished in recent years – employment has fallen approximately 30% in the last five years alone – Brevard’s sector has prospered, adding both jobs and companies.
Replicating such success across different industries, however, requires a continuing level of increasingly-skilled workers to lead the advanced work. Universities have a responsibility in that regard and on the Space Coast we have one of the very finest providers of technical talent in Florida Institute of Technology. So too do industry representatives who have the ability to pinpoint those economic activities in which innovation can continue to differentiate us. Regardless, in the next ten to twenty years, as this nation undergoes its most anticipated generational transition to date, the successful provision of a sufficient, targeted workforce pipeline will become of the most pressing economic challenges of our time. For those regions and communities able to lay out a cohesive economic and workforce development strategy – and so far Brevard is one – it may also be an opportunity to gain significant economic advantage.
Reprinted from Space Coast Business August 2009 |
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