DEARBORN ? We’ve lost the entrepreneurial spirit in Michigan, warned David Egner, president and CEO of the Hudson Weber Foundation. But with a few policy changes, Michigan could lead the nation and the world out of the current economic malaise.
Egner, speaking at the TiECon Midwest Conference, one of the state?s largest entrepreneurial gatherings, said the key is not to bet on economic development, rather to focus on cultivating the assets Michigan already has in place.
“We forget, we are the best supply chain management center in the world,” Egner said. “The most crossed international border is here. Windsor is the largest city on the northern border of the United States. Why aren’t we taking advantage of the Canadian border?”
Michigan also needs to cultivate the educational prowess at Wayne State University, the University of Michigan, Michigan State University. He said the sixth largest creative class in the country lives in Michigan. Capitalize on that asset, he said.
“TechTransfer is the second building block,” he said. “There is $1.7 billion a year spent on research at those three universities. If we unleashed the power of those universities, it would make a tremendous difference in the economy.”
The biggest problem has been economic development, which frequently has been split into artificial boundaries of cities and counties without thinking about the region. This is how economies really operate, he said.
But the key to making Michigan more economically viable is retaining and recruiting young, college educated people under 35. Only 15,000 of these folks live in Detroit. If Detroit had the same proportion at Chicago, there would be another 135,000 in the city.
Without more of those folks in the city, Egner said, “human services can’t work, arts and culture will crash, and we will not be a region that can attract anything.”
What are some of the initiatives that can be undertaken to create that entrepreneurial environment in Michigan?
For the first time, nine community colleges and six work force training boards are working together to spend millions in workforce training dollars so people can actually find work after completing training.
The New Economy Initiative that Egner leads is backing Bizdom U, the entrepreneur training program at Wayne State University founded by Quicken Loans owner Dan Gilbert.
The NEI is backing Launch Pad, an entrepreneurial training effort at Wayne State and Walsh College.
The NEI is working to connect university laboratories to entrepreneurs, since those labs are frequently far cheaper places to do product evaluation and prototyping.
The NEI is working for better access to capital, including a $5 million First Step Fund awarded through agencies like Ann Arbor Spark, Wayne State?s TechTown and Oakland Univeristy?s business incubator.
For more on the NEI, click on NewEconomyInitiative.CFSEM.Org
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