Create West Virginia

Creative Resolutions for 2008

Happy New Year! We thought it would be interesting to throw out some recommended resolutions to get us started on the right creative foot in 2008. In addition to the ones below, the createwv.com site has a list of "Big Ideas" your community might want to use as inspiration (see the Big Ideas link on the home page).

Here we go, we'll make it easy and just ask that you pick one of the following:

• Start a business - Make this the year you turn your innovative idea into a reality! Get together with some friends, form a LLC, and get going. Our state needs to ramp up our entrepreneurial energy, and it begins with individuals like you with bold ideas. The folks at the West Virginia Small Business Development Center would love to help - and their services are free! With today's Internet tools, it really isn't that hard to test and launch a new concept. Go for it!
• Become an angel investor - OK, this one is for those with a little cash to spare. So if you don't have the cash, go ask a wealthier friend to consider it. Our state is in real need of early stage investors who are willing to put up the riskier money required to get new business ventures off the ground. If you're interested, talk to Jamie Gaucher in the WV Development Office. He'll do everything he can to help you.
• Inspire your local principal - Set up a meeting, ask him or her how you and others can help your local elementary, junior high or high school become a world class school for the arts, math or science. It can happen, but only with strong community support and higher expectations.
• Invest in art - Support your West Virginia artists by investing in a quality work of art for your home or office. Without buyers, artists can't make a living...if they can't make a living here, they won't be able to live here. And if you haven't bought in yet on why artists are important to attracting other creative, new economy workers...well, keep reading our blog! <g>
• Support the WV music scene - As our friend Larry Groce likes to say at the end of each Mountain Stage, "Why don't you go out and enjoy some live music?" West Virginia really does have some talented individuals and bands to choose from, whether it be classical, jazz, bluegrass, rock or other genres. If you haven't attended a Mountain Stage event yet, do it! It's truly one of WV's greatest cultural assets. If you're into traditional stuff, attend a FOOTMAD event. Have no idea what to explore? Check out Graffiti or The Gazz and you'll find what you're looking for.   
• Recruit a creative friend - We all know we've lost a LOT of creative talent in all realms over the years - artists, musicians, entrepreneurs, Ph.D.s, engineers, etc. It's time to build on the momentum we've seen in 2007 and invite some people back into West Virginia. Yes, it's happening in the Eastern Panhandle and Northcentral WV. And yes, other parts of West Virginia need some work before they experience anything similar. But it all begins with an invitation for folks to enjoy the quality of life we have here in our state. Sell them on how our hills are a great place to create. Perhaps only a few early adopters will "get it" at first, but that's how tipping points get started.  Our personal priorities? Cutting-edge artists, musicians, research scientists and entrepreneurs. They'll help get the ball rolling for everyone else.
• Finish your college degree or get an advanced degree - Or encourage someone else to get theirs. We're 51st in percentage of adults with a college degree. We simply have to turn this around quickly and embrace education for a healthy 21st century West Virginia. With so many online classes these days, you can do it a lot easier than you think.

There you go. No excuses now. Print this list out and pin it on the fridge. Good luck in 2008!

Do you have other creative resolutions you'd like to share?

Create WV 2008 Plans

The Creative Communities team of A Vision Shared met on Friday, December 14, to sort through the feedback from the Create WV conference and to determine major goals for 2008. We would very much appreciate your thoughts on these initiatives and any feedback you would like to share by posting on this site or emailing createwv@visionshared.com.

·         2008 Create WV Conference – Lock on dates and innovations in January so we can get on sponsors radar and build on 2007 success. Big idea: Invite towns around West Virginia to submit their proposal to hold Create WV in their town and partner with them to leave a lasting creative legacy behind.

·         Train the Trainer – Generate a list of key “new economy” skills and train current people in key econ dev roles – EDA Directors, Extension Agents, City/County Planners, etc.

·         Creative Community Scorecard – Help evaluate communities on annual basis by assessing where they stand on core pillars of creative community growth – 21^st century education, sustainable development, support for entrepreneurs, tolerance/diversity, etc. Work with Vision Shared teams to develop their portion of the scorecard and publish it to drive attention and action across the state.

·         Create WV Roadshows – Mini-versions of Create WV conference content presented in 2/3 day format in key WV regions designed to broaden and deepen awareness of new economy/creative community issues; co-hosted by a local group.

·         Legislative Goals – Work towards passing a resolution in support of and study of new economy growth in WV; use as a momentum builder towards major community “extreme makeover” initiative that would provide communities who have done extensive new economy planning to receive major funds to implement their plan; rollout 2-5 community grants per year.

·         External Communications – Begin study and dialogue with Development Office on how to position and promote WV as a “place to create” to recruit new talent to the state.

·         Creative Culture Research – Partner with an academic research entity to develop an in-depth understanding of the underlying attitudinal and socio-economic issues that keep WV from embracing the New Economy and key pillars required for building Creative Communities.

It's a pretty big list, isn't it? What do you think are the 2-3 highest priorities? We'd love to hear from you.

New State Slogan: Open for Immigrants?

Since "Open for Business" has run its course on our welcome signs, perhaps it's time to discuss who we're open for as much as what we're open for.

In the New Economy, any discussion has to begin with the global competition for talent. And by global, we do mean global. It's a simple equation:

• The New Economy runs on innovation
• Innovation requires skilled talent
• As U.S. demographics (aging population) and careers tastes change (over half of the U.S. students in engineering and computer science graduate programs are from India or Asian countries), skilled talent is increasingly coming from outside U.S. borders
• Whichever parts of the world welcome and proactively recruit top talent most effectively win in the realm of economic growth

The United States, and especially non-diverse, lower-educated regions such as West Virginia, are at a severe crossroads. How can we replace our aging workforce? What new sources of young talent can we identify? How can we infuse our region with the highly educated, highly skilled workers required to drive our economy forward?

We must develop a creative approach to immigration, both from within the country and beyond U.S. borders.

Of course, this can be highly controversial. In many people's minds, the term immigration conjures up images of illegal immigrants overwhelming public services and taking U.S. workers' jobs. Wherever you stand on that issue, note we're talking about the opposite kind of situation. As an example, imagine where our rural communities in West Virginia would be in terms of healthcare services without Indian or Filipino doctors.

In the post-9/11 climate, the U.S. has been working to become more restrictive with immigration. It has had the unfortunate effect of slowing down the stream of talented, well-educated immigrants coming to our shores. From Investor's Business Daily:

According to a recent Pew Research Center report, while expressing strong support for global trade, 75% of Americans surveyed agreed with the statement "We should further restrict and control immigration." Only 23% disagreed.

In addition, China and India are rapidly building up their educational infrastructure to the point where it is no longer a given than an ambitious citizen from those countries will need to come to a U.S. university for excellent training.

The U.S. has benefited from the efforts of these immigrants in high tech industries for the past twenty years because many of them stay and fill critical jobs in our best companies or start their own companies, creating more jobs in the U.S. Consider these findings from a joint Duke-UC Berkeley study of engineering and high-tech firms started in the U.S. from 1995-2005:

• In over 25% of these companies, at least one key founder was foreign-born.
• These immigrant-founded companies generated $52 billion in sales and employed over 450,000 people in 2005.
• Of all immigrant-founded engineering and high tech companies in the U.S., 26% of the founders were from India alone.
• Almost 80% of immigrant-founded companies were concentrated in two sectors: software and innovation/manufacturing-related services.
• The contributions of non-citizens to international patent applications deriving from the U.S. is dramatic, increasing from 7% in 1998 to 24% in 2006 (if those immigrants were not allowed in the U.S., these types of innovations would not have been developed or would have been developed outside the U.S.)

Other parts of the world are taking notice of the United States' conflict over immigration policy, and they are leaping at the opportunity. Europe, for instance, while facing similar concerns over terrorism and security, is putting forth some bold, innovative approaches to welcoming immigrant talent to their countries.

States such as Iowa have been experimenting with some innovative and controversial policies and programs of their own dealing with not only "skilled" immigration but unskilled as well. Mark Grey, Director of the Center for Immigrant Leadership and Integration at the University of Northern Iowa, was a recent speaker at the Create WV Conference sharing some lessons learned.

We should be asking ourselves and our elected officials:

• As a nation and a state of former immigrants, and a region in dire need of an influx of talent, what should our strategy be for identifying and welcoming immigrants to West Virginia?
• How do we keep an open dialogue with current citizens and proactively address concerns that have kept many fearful of immigration?
• How do we compete on a global scale for the talent required to thrive in the 21st century?
• What is the alternative to not competing effectively for talent of all types in this global economy?  

International Firms Meld Cultures in the Mid-Ohio Valley

A great article in the Parkersburg News on the influence of international companies on the community, including a focus on teamwork:

“The teamwork here is unbelievable,” said Hino team leader Anthony Frontera of Parkersburg. “When we’re done with a job, we all yell ‘Complete!’ together.There’s not office staff and production — we’re all together,” she said. “Everybody is a team and that’s a big difference from where I’ve worked before.”

Incidentally, Parkersburg is a member of the National League of Cities' "Inclusive Communities" program.

The Power of Ph.D.'s

After a string of good news, South Charleston faced some bad news this week: More layoffs from Dow Chemical within their long-suffering research center in the Kanawha Valley. Up to 150 scientists - highly paid Ph.D.'s with salaries north of $100K - will be either relocated or let go in the coming year. Once a proud employer of over 3,800 in the Valley and source of over 30,000 patents, the vaunted Dow research center barely has the lights on anymore, shifting the focus of their research to new international markets.

The economic anxiety this sort of announcement causes is justified. Each high-paying job lost ripples through the rest of the economy. It's been documented by various sources that a given manufacturing job generates four additional jobs (mostly in the service industries, but also other sectors); imagine the loss of 150 $100K+ jobs and the impact of losing $15 million in salaries?

This announcement points to three critical truths that West Virginia leaders and citizens must embrace:

• High-paying R&D-oriented jobs are critical to the economy. They cannot be replaced by service industry jobs in retail, hospitality or tourism which have an average salary of around $22,000. These Dow research scientists were "creative class" before creative class was cool to discuss, but their loss over the years has drained the Kanawha Valley of economic vitality, which has lead to severe population loss.
• Research, by definition, must be cutting-edge. This means our state must stay on the competitive forefront in research sectors vital to growth in the New Economy as well as traditional energy and chemical industries. This requires a talented pool of young people coming out of our high schools and colleges with strong "STEM" skills (science, technology, engineering, math) and attract world-class researchers to our universities. This requires commitment, risk-taking and investment. By all accounts, West Virginia is not being nearly as aggressive in either area as we need to be. Reach WV EPSCOR's Vision 2015 strategic plan for tangible ideas on how to improve this situation.
• Research + entrepreneurship = growth. It's not enough to have a few large universities or corporate neighbors investing in research. We also must develop the entrepreneurial mindset to spin-off new companies based on the research breakthroughs. It's beginning to happen at Marshall and WVU, but we need to turn on the after-burners and build the support systems required to spin off companies at a more rapid pace.

Luckily for South Charleston, two entities are stepping in to create new research centers of excellence. Dow's Union Carbide subsidiary recently donated 58 acres of their former research facility in South Charleston to WVU. WVU will turn the facility into a WVU Charleston Research Campus. The WVU Charleston Research Campus (WVUCRC), as it will be known, will serve as a center of research and economic development focusing on energy and chemical technology.

MATRIC, a very entrepreneurial non-profit led by state native Keith Pauley, has been growing by leaps and bounds by leveraging the expertise of former laid-off Ph.D.'s to attract Federal research grants. MATRIC has also had success in spinning off new private companies from their research efforts. Small, nimble, entrepreneurial entities such as MATRIC may be the more effective way to speed up research-driven growth in our Internet-speed world.

West Virginia must embrace an innovative mindset so that new research-driven entities can spring up to balance the impact of older corporations who no longer can sustain the presence of their heyday. What is your community doing to embrace research and the talented scientists, engineers and technical thought leaders who make it possible?

Davis, WV: "One of America's Best Outdoor Towns"

More recognition for the cool little town of Davis, WV, in Tucker County. This time MSNBC names it one of the best towns for outdoor activities in the country. From the article:

Davis may have a diminutive population—624, at last count—but its dedication to the outdoors is gargantuan. Blackwater Bike Shop (304-259-5286), a local outfit owned by West Virginian mountain biker Roger Lilly, services some of the country’s top riders, and will also happily rent rookies their own fat tires, and point out top trails including the 28-mile Plantation Trail. Blackwater Brewing Company (304-259-4221) keeps bikers, hikers and skiers stoked with burgers, bratwurst and craft beers while the Bright Morning Inn (304-259-5119) lodges travelers in a former 19^th-century boardinghouse and saloon. And yes, there are skiers here; 150 inches of snow fall on Davis each year, creating scenic and surprisingly steep trails at Timberline Four Seasons Resort (866-438-7259) and Canaan Valley (800-622-4121). Crowds and lift lines are a rarity here.

If we could just knit together a little more infrastructure in that area to go along with the forthcoming Corridor H highway, the whole "Potomac Highlands" region of West Virginia could be positioned for some healthy growth.