 Seven years ago, during the dot-com frenzy, a group of business and community leaders met in Columbia to discuss their concerns that the state was being left behind. They watched while cities such as Austin, Texas, and Raleigh, N.C., surpassed Columbia in innovation and per capita income. But knowing that Columbia, and South Carolina, could compete, the group set out make South Carolina the best in the world. The question was, at what?
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 The unemployment rate in South Carolina was listed at 9.5% in December, and is the third highest in the nation. Twenty-seven counties in South Carolina have an unemployment rate in the double-digits. So what are towns like Whitmire, which just lost its major employer, doing to battle the souring economy?
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 It might look good — and it might smell green — to take a Toyota Prius from 50 to 100 miles per gallon. But John Dabels says the fuel savings is much more significant if you take a garbage truck from three to four miles per gallon. That's why his company, Rock Hill-based EV Power Systems, has designed a system to turn large trucks -- even garbage trucks -- into hybrids.
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 The Centers for Economic Excellence program is helping hospitals across the state share the success Palmetto Health Heart Hospital has found in reducing the number of post-surgery infections to zero. Jay Moskowitz, who chairs the COEE program in clinical and translational research at the University of South Carolina, will analyze Palmetto Health's experience and pass on the findings to other health care providers. This is just one example of the way COEE is supporting research efforts in the state.
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 To many, sweet potatoes are primarily a Thanksgiving staple. But to Charleston horticulturist Janice Ryan-Bohac, sweet potatoes are powerhouse vegetables with the ability to replace most of the gasoline fueling cars in South Carolina. Ryan-Bohac is the scientific force behind a consortium developing a model for production of ethanol crops that grow well in the Southeast. Corn is the primary crop used for ethanol production today, but the tall husks, which flourish in the Midwest, don’t thrive in the hot, dry climate here. However, sweet potatoes and sweet sorghum, a plant similar to sugar, do.
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 In recent years, shrimp caught by picturesque shrimp boats trawling off the coast have been increasingly replaced by frozen shrimp in boxes, imported from overseas, or by farm-raised shrimp grown in ponds. But at the Waddell Mariculture Center in Bluffton, biologists have been trying to find ways to produce fresh, local shrimp and offset the need for imports. What they've come up with is what researchers call the "way of the future for shrimping."
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 After a three-year stint in the Bush administration and a subsequent three years running Nelson Mullins' Washington, D.C. office, George B. Wolfe has returned home to South Carolina. Wolfe, who helped develop the state's economic development policies and legislation in the 1990s has immersed himself, once again, in the state's economic development efforts.
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