Changing Horses : Recreating Entrepreneurial Economies in the Mid-Western United States

Economies of the Midwest United States led the world in entrepreneurialism, wealth creation, and economic transformation in the 20th century. But the institutions created to maintain that wealth are now constraining the region's capacity to make the changes necessary to adapt to the new global economy. The new economy requires knowledge creation, innovation, risk taking, and other characteristics of entrepreneurial economics. To restore their entrepreneurial capacity, the economies of the Midwest need to create and integrate four institutional capacities: the agglomeration of research and skill sets that we often associate with university research parks, assistance to new business start-ups through "one-stop shops" for economic development, stronger private sector connections with the region's research universities, and very early-stage venture funding. None of these things in isolation is more than a real estate venture, a government bureaucracy, an ivory tower, or raw capital. But in combination they can maximize the breadth and depth of human capital participation in the economic development enterprise