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“This is the way the world thinks about innovation; they don’t think about countries or states or metropolitan areas, or even cities, they think about districts,” he said. “You have that now, and you need to play it out.” [Report release event: Capturing the next economy: Pittsburgh’s rise as a global innovation city]
Bruce Katz of Brookings said Oakland, with the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University, could become a “playground of innovation” through a partnership recommended in the report. The InnovatePGH partnership would feature collaboration between the city, universities, entrepreneurs and corporations to nurture high-tech business. [Report release event: Capturing the next economy: Pittsburgh’s rise as a global innovation city]
“You were a ‘first mover’ around steel and that had dramatic multiplier effects across the economy,” Bruce Katz, a scholar at Washington, D.C.-based Brookings Institution, told some 200 people at a conference in the Hill District. “And we’re saying you can do it again. You can do this.” [Report release event: Capturing the next economy: Pittsburgh’s rise as a global innovation city]
"What startups need when they're coming out of a university or just generally emerging is they need an ecosystem," Katz said. "They need access to some capital. They need access to mentoring. They usually need, like, a co-working space. They need a community that basically is supporting them." [Report release event: Capturing the next economy: Pittsburgh’s rise as a global innovation city]
"You happen to be the world's best naturally occurring innovation district, so you could just wait for everyone to copy you and mimic what you already have, or you could say 'We're going to take our starting point and move it one step beyond,'" Katz said. "'We're going to make Oakland a living laboratory for technological deployment.' When people enter Oakland, they're going to know that they've entered a playground of innovation that doesn't just work for the techies, but for the broader community." [Report release event: Capturing the next economy: Pittsburgh’s rise as a global innovation city]
