Philly and the Countryside?

Once in a while I get a call from someone asking me to comment on the Pennsylvania economy. It's a curious question since it presumes there is some economic integration across Pennsylvania. In reality, the economic connections accross the state are tenuous at best. NE Pennsylvania has more interaction with New York City than with us. We have far more connections to the WV Panhandle or even Cleveland (part of a future Cleveburgh maybe?) than with Philadelphia. but we are bound together by the myriad state level policies that affect all of us. That being said, I do wonder if we leverage enough of our complementary regional strengths across the state that whether more could be done to link economic development efforts across regions within Pennsylvania.

So a long lead in... was just trying to introduce Philly's new branding intitiative via this website: Forever Independent - Philadelphia and the countryside. Though I wonder how the vast Philadelphia agglomeration really gets along with its countryside? but also, this seems to be a theme as well: A website for Innovation Philadelphia is worth perusing. There is also a related idea out east that Philly wants to host the 2016 Olympics. Think I am joking, they already have a Philadelphia Organizing committee. If only that cross state maglev existed, we could try and get them to think about it being a Pennsylvania Olympic bid.

the neo-infrastructure

Just so people do not think I hold a narrow view on what defines infrastructure. Here is a paper just presented at the fifth Workshop on the Economics of Information Security at Cambridge Univ*:

Costs to the U.S. Economy of Information Infrastructure Failures: Estimates from Field Studies and Economic Data by Dynes, Andrijcic and Johnson

* Gleaned from Bruce Schnieder and his Wired News column.

expatriate Pittsburgher cavalry to the rescue

So it is now common knowledge that Mark Cuban, Dan Marino and others are looking to buy the Penguins. Without getting into it too much, the interesting thing is that at least Cuban is explicit that his participation is contingent on the team staying in Pittsburgh. Now, I am not a big poker player... but it seems to me that if you have a billionaire and a couple of uber-millionaires all intent on keeping the Penguins in town at all costs, there is a lot less incentive to have casino revenues go toward building a new arena. If nothing else it says something about where this new group sees itself in the whole casino debate. They have essentially shown their hands, which would typically not be a good thing to do. but I ususally presume that successful people, as these obviously are, have reasons for each of the things they do.

and who is going to buy the Pirates now if these rumors of the team being put up for sale soon wind up to be true?

Mapping the Blogosphere

Did Toland every come up with a name for the Burghosphere? Anyway, I predict the greater blogosphere is going to short circuit itself self-referencing this article: the Chronicle of Higher education has an article just out on Mapping the Blogosphere.

but the maps in this article just made me think of this web site on Visual Complexity.

What the world thinks of Pittsburgh

At the risk of being overly verbose, I mentioned that I was in Brussels recently at the European Commission for some meetings on the topic of how regions are adapting to globalization and more generally on how they are implementing economic transformation. Lots of blog fodder from that which I will parse into just a few posts. The executive summary is simple: the challenge to transform regions from older industrial bases to modern knowledge-based economies is a ubiquitous goal from the Ruhr Valley of Germany to Harbin, China… Yet it is a challenge that has few clear paths to achieve.

We get invited to these things because Pittsburgh is seen in much of the world as a role model of transformation and resurgence despite what we sometimes think of ourselves. I am the first to tout just how far Pittsburgh has come in the last 2 decades, but to a certain degree I think they may not have as much to learn from us as they think. The Pittsburgh lesson is really the de facto policy in the US of letting regions fend for themselves far more than is typical elsewhere. Thus we endure a lot more pain in the short run, the payoff comes from faster response to structural shifts that are unavoidable. I actually think we have a lot to learn from European regions as well. Anyone who has seen the comparable ‘mill towns’ of Germany will be amazed at just how well maintained they remain even after their core industries disappeared. Europeans rarely abandon in place whole communities to the degree we have left many of the towns of the Mon Valley implode.

Can policymakers find a balance between minimizing economic pain yet hastening the speed of change that must happen inevitably? Whether they should even try borders on a philosophical question. How to find that balance may be the distinction between the study of economics and the practice of economic development. Anyway... enough for now. More to follow in a few days.

Milwaukee debates economic development

If there is anyone who thinks the issues we debate here are much different from what is going on almost everywhere else.. Milwaukee is debating between two vastly different visions of how to promote its own knowledge-based economy with a similar focus on biotechnology. The choices being a five-university collaboration of existing academic research in the region and an effort being pushed by a venture capital fund to create a new $250 innovation center focused on the commercialization of technology. The ironic thing seems to be that the venture captial fund is suggesting that this new center could be funded by a regional sales tax (anyone remember RRI?) while the university based idea seems to use own source money to some degree.

What I don't get is why they see these choices as an either-or decision. Obtaining the venture capital, producing the research and advancing toward commercialization all need to happen. Could this story be written about Pittsburgh?

wireless-when?

I do realize the Pittsblog readership does not need me to summarize news for them. But Corilyn Shropshire digs up the turmoil surrounding the project to get community wireless in place by the All-Star game... now clearly not going to happen. The engineer in me had thought the timeline was just too compressed to get this rolled out in time, but it turns out that the penny stock company that was supposed to do this had its president resign along with 5 others on its board of directors in the days just BEFORE City Council approved the program. too funny. Actually if you read their resignation email, several say they are resigning because they want to participate in debtor-in-possession lending to the firm or are resigning on the advice of counsel. Just not a good sign of financial strength.

RoboWeek in RoboBurgh

Lots of coverage of Robotics expo in town today: (Robobusiness 2006). Skipping the local coverage, something that you might not have caught is this writeup in BusinessWeek on RoboBill: CMU's Red Whitaker: A Man and his robots.

Raised just outside of Pittsburgh, educated here, successful here. Can we say: retained talent.

infrastructure still matters

Lost amid all the talk over the 'new economy' is talk about some basic infrastructure that is still important. Note today's story by Lawrence Walsh in the PG today on Duquesne Light's planned investment to upgrade electriciy service in the region. Think this is just an 'old' economy concern? Consider that Google has placed its massive new data core in North-Central Oregon at least in part becasue of inexpensive and reliable electricity. I have probably said this before, but a lot of the industrial base in the region is still an energy intensive sector. Not just price but reliability is key, try shutting down a chemical process unexpectedly and what you get is just not good.

new comments back online....

have worked out bugs in moderating comments, but all is working now. Apologies to a few who saw delays in their comments being posted online. -C

wireless-less

Can't say this is surprising, but this article in the Trib is reporting on Saturday that the probabilty of having community wireless in place downtown by the time the All Star game comes to town is slim. I had earlier posted this entry out some of the issues and difficulties in this type of project. Given some of the technical and legal issues involved, it was all a very rushed timeline from the beginning.

Is it competition or infighting?

Some may recall that last year the Charlotte Regional Partnership hired away Ronnie Bryant from the Pittsburgh Regional Alliance. The CRP just released a study on the impact of intra-regional tax incentives. You can read more in this article in the Charlotte Business Journal. You can get a feel for why the CRP needed a little Pittsburgh expertise down there. Ronnie gained some first hand knowledge of intra-regional competition (a more polite way of saying 'infighting') while in town. How to get regions to work together is an issue almost everywhere becasue there just isn't a level of goverment that is empowered to act across counties in most of the US. For this study to be commissioned this must have been perceived to be a problem in the Charlotte area. Yet, according to this press account, the study concludes it's not as big an issue as it may appear. It is an interesting question what a similar study for the Pittsburgh region would conclude.

Mark Cuban on #7

Anyone see Mark Cuban on David Letterman last night where he was wearing a Roethlisberger #7 Jersey. A signal? I doubt the Rooney's are selling the Steelers anytime soon (or ever for that matter), but you never never know in this crazy world.

and apologies to those who have tried to post comments in last few days. I was away and now seem to have not fully figured out how to moderate comments. We will sort this out shortly and get all comments posted... even the ones already submitted.

CEO's for Cities

Though it sounds like a political campaign, Business week is reporting on a program: CEO's for Cities that has a goal of improving innovative capacity within cities. It also seems to include a Pittsburgh focus. The article is worth a read. I actually just got back from meetings in Brussels focused on this fundamental question of how regions transform from industrial based economies to knowledge based innovative regions. I have some bloggable thoughts from these meetings that I will try to type up once I sleep off some jet lag.

Pittsburgh: genius or not?

Mike mentioned some time ago this was in the pipeline… Pittsburgh Community Television will be airing the premier of Pittsburgh Genius on Monday, July 3, 2006 on Comcast Channel 21. The show will highlight just a few of the people who work in the region and make it a “pre-eminent creative and intellectual center”.

A confounding corollary to this, the Pittsburgh Business Times is reporting this week that Pittsburgh is just average when it comes to the educational attainment of the local population. How can this be given our plethora of local educational institutions. Well, we are an old region. The older generation across the country typically did not go to graduate school, college or even high school at the rates we do now. The typical way to measure this type of benchmark is the prevalance of those with college degrees age 35 and over. But by comingling the educational attainment of younger and older age cohorts, all you really get is an artifact of the elderly age demographic here... and you get nothing about the educational attainment of the workforce or of younger parts of the population where most of the hiring happens. This story pops up every year it seems. In fact, last year the same publication called me when they were thinking of doing this same exact story and I think I convinced the PBT that was not really meaningful in a Pittsburgh context. Whether becasue of my prodding or not, I never saw a story run.... alas, not this year. If you are interested more representative age adjusted benchmarks, I have some for the region and the city.

I'll Be Right Back

I'm taking a short break from blogging, but I'll be back. I promise. Meanwhile, to mark the occasion, here are links to a series of "Welcome to Pittsburgh" posts that I wrote a year ago.

Part VIII (odds and ends)
Part VII (regional geography)
Part VI (language)
Part V (sports)
Part IV (driving)
Part III (crossing the rivers)
Part II (food)
Part I (tradition)

If you'd like to comment, go ahead, but it would probably be more helpful to comment on *this post* rather than on the posts from a year ago!

The Pittsburgh Bubble

Always read all the way to the end:

From "For local tech startups, timing, luck are everything" in this morning's Post-Gazette:

In the risk-averse, post-bubble tech world, ClearSpring and BitArmor are a success story.

They are among the increasingly small number of infant firms that have managed to rope in investment dollars without products, customers or proven track record, tech observers said.
It's a feat that is considered by many in the local industry to be even more difficult, given Pittsburgh's deep-pocketed, yet conservative investing community, steeped in corporate culture and perceived to be wary of new ideas.

Exactly why should it be a good thing that any startup can get funded without products, customers, or a track record? If local investors don't want to put money in that sort of thing, that doesn't sound like irrational risk-aversion; it sounds like good business sense.

Cutting edge Pittsburgh

I can't really vouch for how much street cred' this particular source has, or whether it will influence next years Forbes magazine ranking of the best regions for singles... but the virtual publication Budget Travel Online has a story out today on Cutting Edge Pittsburgh. It's not an oxymoron. I was going to joke that we will know we have hit the big time when they publish a "Lonely Planet Pittsburgh" guidebook, but in fact there is at least a minimal online version.

Speaking of Westinghouse..

Here is a question. In what single technology does Pittsburgh have the highest comparative advantage? Life sciences could be a contender, but there are other regions with at least similar advantages. How about nuclear power engineering? By some measures, Pittsburgh has more nuclear engineers than any other metro area. A lot are here becasue of the Bettis National Lab, but Westinghouse has a large role.

Nuclear power could be big economic news here in the future. There is actually news today with the notification that the proposed sale of Westinghouse's nuclear division from British Nuclear Fuels Limited (BNFL) to Toshiba has been cleared by Treasury department regulators who oversee such sales. The just-passed energy appropriations bill includes a $40 million increase for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission because of the anticipated growth in reactor license applications. Some are just renewals, but there are new nuclear power reactors being planned both domestically and internationally. If BNFL/Toshiba (née Westinghouse) gets some of that business, what are the impacts on the region's tech base?

An ethereal city

Community wireless is promised for downtown and the north shore by the All Star Game. How important is wireless to city/regional competitiveness? It is such a common issue these days that the current issue of Area Development Magazine asks: Is Wireless the New Wired? Also, the city of St. Paul has just released a thorough Broadband Technology Needs Assessment that is worth a read. What is clear from both is that for a true amenity enhancement, it's the infrastructure and high speed backbone that is also essential to local businesses, not just a few more free hot spots for itinerant blog-readers. One way or the other, there will be challenges. If lessons from a similar plan in New Orleans is any guide, it's not as easy as it would seem.