North Carolina Innovation Economist Moderates National Teleconference on Innovation Economics

Raleigh, N.C., USA (SANEPR.com) April 11, 2008 -- The long-term economic woes of America were the topic of an April 10, 2008, national roundtable discussion sponsored by the Capital Formation Institute, an advocacy think-tank for innovation economics based in Virginia.
Thomas Vass, an innovation economic expert, located in Raleigh, N. C., was selected by CFI to act as one of the two moderators to lead the discussion for the national teleconference.
“America’s economic problems extend way beyond a mortgage debt crisis or the malaise in the entire credit market,” said Tom Vass. “America’s economic problems are structural and the genesis of the problems are poor economic leadership in the private financial and business networks. These are not problems that can be solved by politicians in Washington or state capitals.”
The teleconference included innovation professionals from across the nation who shared ideas on how to promote American economic innovation strategy. One participant from the Northern Virginia Technology Council indicated that recent research shows that four national economies in the world are outpacing the American economy in innovation and technology commercialization.
While the participants on the national teleconference agreed that innovation economics was a solution to the economic problems, no one could come up with an innovation economic strategy that was better than the one implemented 20 years ago by the City of Littleton, Colorado. The representative from Littleton said that they had not recruited an outside company or paid industrial recruitment incentives for over 20 years. Their job rate of growth in the 20-year period had exceeded 300%, all from locally-based home-grown companies.
Vass used the forum to advocate the creation of new economic development tools to help small manufacturing companies and latent entrepreneurs in each metro region identify new ideas for technological innovation. “America’s structural economic problems are about to become much worse if the small manufacturing enterprises in America do not get good ideas on how to innovate new products,” said Vass.
“Our country is about to lose a whole generation of business owners in small manufacturing enterprises who are now in their late 60s, who may decide to shut their doors and turn out the lights. If they do that, the entire innovation platform in America will go down the tubes, and we will join many other countries in the trash heap of economic history.”
The national dialogue on innovation economics will continue on April 22, 2008. when representatives from Littleton, Colorado will discuss how they implemented their innovation economic strategy, which they call “economic gardening.”

About Thomas Vass. Vass is the author of Predicting Technology: Identifying Future Market Opportunities and Disruptive Technologies, (2007) and the owner of a global due diligence platform called The Private Capital Market, Inc. www.privatecapitalmarket.com.

About the National Roundtable on Innovation Economics. CFI’s national Roundtable on Innovation Economics addresses the critical issues of using innovation to drive an effective economic development strategy. Among the many controversial questions raised by the Moderators, two stand out: “Why, if innovation economics is such a great idea, has the adoption and use of this tool of economic development been so slow” and “Does the traditional economic development model retard development of regional economic innovation?” Pre-registration for the free April 22, 2008 teleconference is available at: www.cfi-institute.org