Fostering Innovation-Based Growth Centers in the Heartland

Unfortunately, in many nations, including the United States, the technology economy has widened regional divides between a small number of dynamic, high-tech “superstar” metropolitan areas and most others. As Rob Akinson writes for Global Innovation Index, the result is now a crisis of regional imbalance at a continental scale that is throwing off disturbing side effects that cry out for response.

What is needed is a major federal push to help transform a short list of “Heartland” metros with some existing strengths into self-sustaining innovation “growth centers.” And to do that, ITIF and the Brookings Institution recently released a report proposing that Congress assemble major package of federal innovation inputs and supports that would help select metropolitan areas not geographically near existing successful tech hubs to support transformative innovation-sector scale-up.