Powering Advanced Industries: A Bipartisan Dialogue on State Strategies

Presentation by Bruce Katz:

See our framing paper,

Powering Advanced Industries: State By State

Innovation and STEM-worker intensive advanced industries drive regional and national economic development in the United States. For that reason, states like Colorado and Tennessee are increasingly taking the lead in fostering these crown-jewel industries in the face of inaction in Washington.

In Colorado, Gov. John Hickenlooper is actively working to promote innovation in his state’s advanced industry sector, including the space and aerospace economy, which provides thousands of jobs in both the public and private sectors with spillover effects in advanced telecommunications, software, and advanced materials.

In Tennessee, Gov. Bill Haslam is moving to expand the South’s leading automotive manufacturing supply chain by upgrading its workforce and catalyzing innovation. There the auto industry is already a powerful driver of the state economy employing nearly 100,000 Tennesseans and accounting for one-third of the state’s manufacturing jobs. In each instance, both states have acted on their own to work with the private sector to renew the nation’s strategic economic base from the bottom-up.

On February 20, the Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings hosted a forum highlighting the importance of the nation’s advanced industries and state-level actions being taken to expand them. Brookings Vice President Bruce Katz and McKinsey Americas Advanced Industries Director Daniel Pacthod framed the discussion by describing the nature and importance of advanced industries. Their remarks were followed by a bipartisan dialogue between Govs. Haslam and Hickenlooper, discussing their efforts to expand key advanced industry clusters and the need for a supportive federal platform for those efforts.

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