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We're a SmartState. Wow, now that's impressive!

In 2002, South Carolina enacted the Centers of Economic Excellence Act, creating endowed research chairs at the state's three research universities. Now branded SmartState, the program recently held its first national conference in Charleston. About 250 people attended, and it was hard not to be impressed with the shear intellectual firepower in the room. Here you can see a very cool video from CBS News about SmartState.

The SmartState program just released its 2011 annual report. At the end of FY 2011, 41 SmartState Endowed Chairs were appointed at MUSC, USC and Clemson. Overall, the State of South Carolina has invested $180 million in hte SmartState Program, which has brought $1.2 billion of additional investments into SC and helped to create or attract over 7,000 jobs. The $1.2 billion breaks down into $184 million of non-state matching funds, research grants of $483 million, and $532 of investments by companies locating close to SmartState chairs.

There were several pithy quotes I captured from the conference.

"None of us are as smart as all of us," and " Innovation occurs at the intersection of talent, investment, and infrastructure." Rick Jarman, National Center for Manufacturing Sciences.

"Innovation occurs at the requires Research, Scale-up, and Manufacturing Excellence."

"We need technology-driven, knowledge-based, economic development." Pam Lackey, AT&T

"There are more cars assembled within 500 miles of CU-ICAR than there are withing 500 miles of Detroit." John Kelly, Clemson VP of Economic Development

Ray Greenberg, President of the Medical University of SC, made five suggestions for where to go from here.

1. Feel the need for speed. We are in a global competition for talent and we need a greater sense of urgency.
2. Enhance flexibility We need to stop and reinterpert the original legislative intent based on conditions as they exist today.
3. Don't sock all the money away in endowments. We need to address the needs of the economy today and recognize that it changes rapidly.
4. Invest in young talent. The endowed chairs themselves are the gray hairs who have established their global reputations, but we also need to focus on the world-class young talent the endowed chairs attract.
5. Link to SC Department of Commerce initiatives. We need to build strength in deep clusters.

Peter Beattie is the originator of the SmartState concept while premier of Queensland, Australia. He closed the conference with a powerful charge.

First, he said he didn't mean to throw cold water on our amazing successes, but the rest of the world is not standing still. We have to continue to invest in the SmartState program just to maintain our position much less to gain ground.

Second, he said to gain the necessary political support for the program we need to sell it to mothers and grandmothers. They must understand that education at all levels is the path to prosperity for their children and grandchildren.

Education = Prosperity