Tag Archives: Albany

Cities as incubators of technological and economic growth: from the rustbelt to the brainbelt

An April 10, 2016 news article by Xumei Dong on the timesunion website casts a light on what some feel is an emerging ‘brainbelt’ (Note: Links have been removed),

Albany [New York state, US], in the forefront of nanotechnology research, is one of the fastest-growing cities for tech jobs, according to a new book exploring hot spots of innovation across the globe.

“You have GlobalFoundries, which has thousands of employees working in one of the most modern plants in the world,” says Antoine van Agtmael, the Dutch-born investor who wrote “The Smartest Places on Earth: Why Rustbelts Are the Emerging Hotspots of Global Innovation” with Dutch journalist Fred Bakker.

Their book, mentioned in a Brookings Institution panel discussion last week [April 6, 2016], lists Albany as a leading innovation hub — part of an emerging “brainbelt” in the United States.

The Brookings Institute’s The smartest places on Earth: Why rustbelts are the emerging hotspots of global innovation event page provides more details and includes an embedded video of the event (running time: roughly 1 hour 17 mins.), Note: A link has been removed,

The conventional wisdom in manufacturing has long held that the key to maintaining a competitive edge lies in making things as cheaply as possible, which saw production outsourced to the developing world in pursuit of ever-lower costs. In contradiction to that prevailing wisdom, authors Antoine van Agtmael, a Brookings trustee, and Fred Bakker crisscrossed the globe and found that the economic tide is beginning to shift from its obsession with cheap goods to the production of smart ones.

Their new book, “The Smartest Places on Earth” (PublicAffairs, 2016), examines this changing dynamic and the transformation of “rustbelt” cities, the former industrial centers of the U.S. and Europe, into a “brainbelt” of design and innovation.

On Wednesday, April 6 [2016] Centennial Scholar Bruce Katz and the Metropolitan Policy Program hosted an event discussing these emerging hotspots and how cities such as Akron, Albany, Raleigh-Durham, Minneapolis-St.Paul, and Portland in the United States, and Eindhoven, Malmo, Dresden, and Oulu in Europe are seizing the initiative and recovering their economic strength.

You can find the book here or if a summary and biographies of the authors will suffice, there’s this,

The remarkable story of how rustbelt cities such as Akron and Albany in the United States and Eindhoven in Europe are becoming the unlikely hotspots of global innovation, where sharing brainpower and making things smarter—not cheaper—is creating a new economy that is turning globalization on its head

Antoine van Agtmael and Fred Bakker counter recent conventional wisdom that the American and northern European economies have lost their initiative in innovation and their competitive edge by focusing on an unexpected and hopeful trend: the emerging sources of economic strength coming from areas once known as “rustbelts” that had been written off as yesterday’s story.

In these communities, a combination of forces—visionary thinkers, local universities, regional government initiatives, start-ups, and big corporations—have created “brainbelts.” Based on trust, a collaborative style of working, and freedom of thinking prevalent in America and Europe, these brainbelts are producing smart products that are transforming industries by integrating IT, sensors, big data, new materials, new discoveries, and automation. From polymers to medical devices, the brainbelts have turned the tide from cheap, outsourced production to making things smart right in our own backyard. The next emerging market may, in fact, be the West.

about Antoine van Agtmael and Fred Bakker

Antoine van Agtmael is senior adviser at Garten Rothkopf, a public policy advisory firm in Washington, DC. He was a founder, CEO, and CIO of Emerging Markets Management LLC; previously he was deputy director of the capital markets department of the International Finance Corporation (“IFC”), the private sector oriented affiliate of the World Bank, and a division chief in the World Bank’s borrowing operations. He was an adjunct professor at Georgetown Law Center and taught at the Harvard Institute of Politics. Mr. van Agtmael is chairman of the NPR Foundation, a member of the board of NPR, and chairman of its Investment Committee. He is also a trustee of The Brookings Institution and cochairman of its International Advisory Council. He is on the President’s Council on International Activities at Yale University, the Advisory Council of Johns Hopkins University’s Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations

Alfred Bakker, until his recent retirement, was a journalist specializing in monetary and financial affairs with Het Financieele Dagblad, the “Financial Times of Holland,” serving as deputy editor, editor-in-chief and CEO. In addition to his writing and editing duties he helped develop the company from a newspaper publisher to a multimedia company, developing several websites, a business news radio channel, and a quarterly business magazine, FD Outlook, and, responsible for the establishment of FD Intelligence

A hard cover copy of the book is $25.99, presumably US currency.

New York state, a second nanotechnology hub with a $1.5B US investment, and computer chip technology

New York State announced, In an Oct. 10, 2013 news item on Nanowerk, a new investment in nanotechnology,

Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced that six leading global technology companies will invest $1.5 billion to create ‘Nano Utica,’ the state’s second major hub of nanotechnology research and development. The public-private partnership, to be spearheaded by the SUNY College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (SUNY CNSE) and the SUNY Institute of Technology (SUNYIT), will create more than 1,000 new high-tech jobs on the campus of SUNYIT in Marcy.

The consortium of leading global technology companies that will create Nano Utica are led by Advanced Nanotechnology Solutions Incorporated (ANSI), SEMATECH, Atotech, and SEMATECH and CNSE partner companies, including IBM, Lam Research and Tokyo Electron. The consortium will be headquartered at the CNSE-SUNYIT Computer Chip Commercialization Center, and will build on the research and development programs currently being conducted by ANSI, SEMATECH, and their private industry partners at the SUNY CNSE campus in Albany, further cementing New York’s international recognition as the preeminent hub for 21st century nanotechnology innovation, education, and economic development.

“With today’s announcement, New York is replicating the tremendous success of Albany’s College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering right here in Utica and paving the way for more than a billion dollars in private investment and the creation of more than 1,000 new jobs,” Governor Cuomo said. “The new Nano Utica facility will serve as a cleanroom and research hub for Nano Utica whose members can tap into the training here at SUNYIT and local workforce, putting the Mohawk Valley on the map as an international location for nanotechnology research and development. This partnership demonstrates how the new New York is making targeted investments to transition our state’s economy to the 21st century and take advantage of the strengths of our world class universities and highly trained workforce.”

The Oct. 10, 2013 SUNY College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering news release, which originated the news item, describes some of the investment’s specifics,

The computer chip packaging consortium will work inside the complex now under construction on the SUNYIT campus, which is due to open in late 2014. As a result of the commitment of the major companies to locate at Nano Utica, the $125 million facility is being expanded to accommodate the new collaboration, with state-of-the-art cleanrooms, laboratories, hands-on education and workforce training facilities, and integrated offices encompassing 253,000 square feet. The cleanroom will be the first-of-its-kind in the nation: a 56,000-square-foot cleanroom stacked on two levels, providing more than five times the space that was originally planned. To support the project, New York State will invest $200 million over ten years for the purchasing of new equipment for the Nano Utica facility; no private company will receive any state funds as part of the initiative.

Research and development to be conducted includes computer chip packaging and lithography development and commercialization. These system-on-a-chip innovations will drive a host of new technologies and products in the consumer and business marketplace, including smart phones, tablets, and laptops; 3D systems for gaming; ultrafast and secure computer servers and IT systems; and sensor technology for emerging health care, clean energy and environmental applications.

Interestingly (to me if no one else), there was a Sept. 2011 announcement from New York state about a new investment in nanoscale computer chip technology and a consortium of companies which also included IBM. From my Sept. 29, 2011 posting,

$4.4B is quite the investment(especially considering the current international economic gyrations) and it’s the amount that IBM (International Business Machines), Intel, and three other companies announced that they are investing to “create the next generation of computer chip technology.” From the Sept. 28, 2011 news item on Nanowerk,

The five companies involved are Intel, IBM, GLOBALFOUNDRIES, TSMC and Samsung. New York State secured the investments in competition with countries in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. The agreements mark an historic level of private investment in the nanotechnology sector in New York. [emphasis mine]

….

IBM has long invested in New York state and its nanotechnology initiatives. I mentioned a $1.5B IBM investment (greater than the US federal government’s annual funding that year for its National Nanotechnology Initiative) in a July 17, 2008 posting.

I wish these announcements would include information as to how the money is being paid out, e.g., one lump sum or an annual disbursement over five years or … .

One last bit. the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering had a somewhat controversial change of status and change of relationship to what I was then calling the University of Albany (mentioned in my July 26, 2013 posting).