TechBelt Uses NAMII as Basis for ‘Roadmap’
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio The three-state regional partnership that submitted the application resulting in the National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Center in downtown Youngstown is now focused on developing a plan for how the region can benefit from it.
The priority for the TechBelt Initiative over the next few weeks is to develop a “white paper on economic development for NAMII in the three-state region,” reports Eric Planey, vice president of international business attraction at the Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber and co-chairman of the TechBelt Initiative. NAMII has given TechBelt “the initiative to creating the economic roadmap” for Ohio, Pennsylvania and the newest state to join the collaborative, West Virginia.
The reason for that is NAMII has a mandate to increase the use of additive manufacturing technology for the entire United States. “But they’re also very cognizant of the fact that the funding from the state of Ohio, Pennsylvania and indirectly from West Virginia. So they want to make sure that we as a region feel the impact from additive manufacturing research being done in our corner,” Planey says.
Meetings have been under way since January and TechBelt’s partners have each submitted information regarding its proposed strategy, from which one “grand strategy” will be formed.
The seed for NAMII was planted with the TechBelt Initiative’s formation six years ago. The collaborative of universities, foundations and other public and private-sector partners in Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia stretches from Greater Cleveland though the Mahoning Valley to Pittsburgh and recently expanded into the Mountaineer State.
Membership in the TechBelt is divided about a third each among universities, chambers of commerce and technology-based economic development entities, Planey says.
Among the partners are Case Western Reserve University, the Cleveland Clinic, the George Gund Foundation and the Greater Cleveland Partnership in Cleveland, and other northeastern Ohio entities – Kent State University, University of Akron, the Northeast Ohio Technology Coalition, Fund for Our Economic Future and Team NEO. Among the partners in western Pennsylvania are the Allegheny Conference on Community Development, Carnegie Mellon University, the Heinz Endowments and Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse in Pittsburgh.
Participants closer to home are Youngstown State University, Youngstown Business Incubator, Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber and Raymond John Wean Foundation. Also in the collaborative is the Oh-Penn Workforce Region, a five-county partnership that focuses on workforce issues.
Initially established with a focus on biosciences, as the partners “started getting to know each other” they realized “we had some very good niches in technology and energy,” Planey says.
When working on economic development opportunities that stretch beyond one region, “We found that partnering with eastern Ohio made a lot of sense,” says DeWitt Peart, executive vice president, economic development, of the Allegheny Conference and president of the Pittsburgh Regional Alliance. He serves as the other co-chairman of TechBelt.
The Allegheny Conference markets its region globally and companies looking to invest don’t see state lines, they look at markets, Peart says. Within the TechBelt region is a supply chain that focuses on energy and manufacturing. “We’re competitively strong as a mega-region,” he says.
Planey is quick to point out that TechBelt doesn’t engage in economic development, and didn’t form a legal entity so it wouldn’t compete with such entities. “What we do is we support organizations with their initiatives by having regional collaboration on projects,” he says.
The initiative began in 2007, recalls U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan, D-13 Ohio, from conversations he had with then-U.S. Rep. Jason Altmire, D-3 Pa.
“This whole region is competing with Mumbai, India, or Shanghai or Beijing, and if we don’t collaborate here locally,” he remarks, “we’re not going to be able to compete globally.”
The Allegheny Conference had longstanding relationships with the chambers of commerce in the region, working with them to lobby for issues in common that require action from the federal government, Peart notes. “It’s natural for us to want to work together on certain initiatives,” he says.
“We thought because of the history of our region, whether it was health care or manufacturing, that if you got everybody in the room, all these major institutions, and you got them talking to one another, then something magical would happen,” Ryan says.
However, “we don’t work together on everything,” Peart points out. “It’s a very focused agenda.We see what the opportunities are and go after those specific opportunities. This is not a model that works for every type of initiative.”
The first meeting of the TechBelt Initiative took place in Stambaugh Stadium at YSU. In attendance were Carnegie Mellon, Case Western Reserve, Kent and Youngstown State universities, and economic development organizations from throughout the Cleveland-Pittsburgh corridor.
“Everyone started talking, and a lot of connections were made,” Ryan says. “We didn’t want people repeating the same research, for example.” If Carnegie Mellon was working on something similar to research at Case, “Why don’t we do it together and have a force multiplier of sorts?” Ryan says the group agreed. There wasn’t going to be a new bureaucracy that would define who did what. “It was creating a space that these institutions could find where they aligned with other institutions and move forward in that area,” he says.
At the outset, TechBelt was staffed through Ryan’s office until it retained a Pittsburgh firm, Fourth Economy Consulting, to staff the entity.
TechBelt looks for opportunities that are bigger than one organization or one state, says Jerry Paytas, Fourth Economy vice president, research and analytics, and the principal individual at his company working on TechBelt. A TechBelt project “has to be something that crosses the border” and can capitalize on the synergies of the region.
“Much of our effort is devoted to identifying those opportunities,” Paytas says. “There’s probably a lot more [projects] that we don’t do than we do.”
Landing the $70 million NAMII is the signature achievement of TechBelt to date. While Fourth Economy did considerable work in the lead up to the application last year – finding and sharing information and coordinating – writing the proposal fell on to the partners, largely the universities and related institutions. “It was much too technical for a lay person to do,” Paytas remarks.
Carnegie Mellon and Case Western, which 10 years earlier had “very little dialogue,” were the ones that recognized the additive manufacturing center proposal as a TechBelt opportunity, Planey recalls. Fourth Economy was “really the glue that put it together,” he adds.
“One thing happened that was very smart,” he continues. Even though it was not a member of TechBelt, someone reached out to Penn State University, which looked at the proposal and team and decided to get involved. TechBelt also reached out to the National Center for Defense Manufacturing and Machining, based on its record of work for the Department of Defense, to act as the lead private-sector partner.
Because it sits in the geographic heart of the TechBelt region, members found it made “a lot of sense” to meet in Youngstown and the city became the logical choice to locate NAMII.
In addition, Youngstown has “a great reputation now within the TechBelt” in terms of accomplishments and ability to execute. Siting NAMII in a building that was part of the YBI campus and could be managed by the incubator was “definitely attractive,” and using an abandoned downtown warehouse promoted urban redevelopment, another plus.
Ryan boasts the TechBelt proposal that landed NAMII beat out competing proposals from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Georgia Tech because of the level of cooperation among the partners.
“This wasn’t a political thing” requiring the center to go to Ohio, he says, pointing out that another of the proposals that the TechBelt application beat was submitted by Ohio State University.
“This was because we put together a team,” he asserts. The TechBelt partners “are world-renowned institutions on their own merits.”
Landing NAMII also demonstrated to the TechBelt partners the potential for success from their cooperation. TechBelt has had “small victories here or there” that didn’t get much publicity, “but this was being shouted out at the State of the Union by the president of the United States,” Ryan says. “What NAMII has really done is tilt the scale toward having a spirit of cooperation and working together.”
Three foundations recently awarded the TechBelt Initiative $130,000. In addition to covering overhead for Fourth Economy and supporting biomedical initiatives, including biomaterials, the funds will be spent on an effort in the energy sector. That effort centers on the supply chain for small modular nuclear reactors as well as other aspects of base load energy.
The TechBelt corridor is home to two leading companies in the field, Babcock & Wilcox in Barberton and Westinghouse in Cranberry Township, Pa.
“They both have needs in the supply chain,” Fourth Economy’s Paytas says. “We’ve got university assets and we’ve got other companies and other energy activity, so we’re in the early phases right now of starting to define what that looks like.” That effort might stay focused on nuclear or could be broadened to encompass more of the energy supply chain because many components used in nuclear are similar to those used in oil and gas, or can be adapted for such use.
The energy sector is a strength of TechBelt that few others can compete with, the Allegheny Conference’s Peart says.
TechBelt isn’t necessarily a job creator today “but puts us in position to create the new jobs in the region for tomorrow,” Planey says.
“We need to think strategically about the next five to seven years out,” he advises. “Because the Mahoning Valley is physically in the center of the TechBelt, we benefit from its existence.”
Copyright 2013 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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