(Photo/Larry Monteith) Ernest Andrade

So it is with growing the knowledge economy, a business that is as much about nurturing and tending the fields as were the rice and cotton farms that made South Carolina a thriving business region centuries ago.

Regardless of the specific crop, whether vegetables or technology firms, it’s all about developing an environment for growth, said Bill Mahoney, CEO of the South Carolina Research Authority, an organization whose core competencies of applied research, R&D management, technology implementation and commercialization form the basis of its mandate to shape the knowledge economy in the state.

“A key measure of a region’s sustainable level of prosperity is its ability to create and commercialize innovations,” Mahoney said. “That’s what we try to do here at SCRA.”

It’s also what Jeff Papenfus, one of the principals with NEXT, Greenville’s economic development resource collaborative, is trying to do in the Upstate.

“NEXT is sort of an entrepreneurial support group,” Papenfus said. “We focus on high-tech entrepreneurs. We realized a while back that there are all these companies starting up and growing around Greenville and the Upstate, and making their way in the world, but there was no single place for them to go and learn from each other and have shared experiences.”

Papenfus said NEXT was modeled after the Charleston Digital Corridor, a creative effort by the city of Charleston to “attract, nurture and grow its knowledge economy,” according to Ernest Andrade, executive director of the CDC.
Papenfus recalled his introduction to the corridor’s endeavors.

“John Moore at the (Greenville) Chamber of Commerce and I were in a meeting and Ernest was presenting what he had done in Charleston,” said Papenfus. “We looked at it and said, ‘This is great!’ We felt that if the Digital Corridor did nothing else but make people start to focus on technology entrepreneurs, then Ernest had met his goal. But the question was, why weren’t we doing the same thing?”

Papenfus said the Greenville area had several technology companies but not much support.

“We went back down to Charleston to meet with Ernest and learned what he had done,” he said.

What Papenfus discovered at the corridor were several targeted initiatives to address the dynamic needs of knowledge-based companies, including the Talent Portal, an online job listing and skill-bank repository; the Corridor Roundtable (a group of experts that provide guidance and assistance for entrepreneurs); Touchdown Space (temporary full-service office space for companies in transition); and a monthly series of interactive forums called Fridays @ the Corridor to inform and educate knowledge-based companies.

“We took the best of what Ernest was doing, adapted it to fit our area and came up with NEXT,” Papenfus said. “The name refers to the next path, next step, next success story.”

Andrade said he is eager to share the corridor’s initiatives with other communities.

“The issues that different communities face are similar and, consequently, the prescription of solutions may vary just a little bit based on particulars, but the reality is the issues are the same,” he said. “And if we’re in a position to assist, we do.”
Economic development staff members have traveled from as far away as Pennsylvania to tap into Andrade’s vision. Last June, Andrade traveled to New York to participate in the Intelligent Community Forum’s “Building the Broadband Economy 2006.”

Connectivity and sharing are important ingredients in Andrade’s work.

“Gone are the days when economic development was a behind-the-scenes endeavor,” he said. “The knowledge economy is very open, very connected.”

The SCRA’s Mahoney agreed. “The challenge is how to connect them all, and there are many things we do to make sure that connection occurs,” he said. “We go around the state and spend a lot of time educating entrepreneurs about what’s available to them. It’s truly an open-source allocation of programs.”

What distinguishes the knowledge economy from traditional economic models is that the ecosystems develop at a local level, with more collaboration and sharing of resources, Andrade said.

“Knowledge-economy companies are more connected because the companies are typically smaller, so they’re more prone to reach out when they need assistance,” he said. “A bigger company would likely hire in what they need. They have resources to go out and employ the best and brightest.”

Cultivating the soil
“Merely learning about soil conditions isn’t enough,” Papenfus said. “The key to growing a knowledge economy is cultivating the environment.

“If you were to look at successful regions where entrepreneurial activities are rampant, there are a couple of things you’ll see. First, success begets success. The folks that came before the ones that are in Silicon Valley now and the ones that came before those—even the failures—have contributed to the companies (thriving) today. If I were in Silicon Valley and saw people who’ve done before what I’m trying to do, I would know I could go to them and get them on my advisory board.

“Plus there’s (potential) venture capital and angel money, the idea being that the entrepreneurs who were there before might be willing to invest in something in the same way someone invested in them.”

John Warner, publisher of a Web and blog site dedicated to news of the Southeastern Innovation Corridor, has a different perspective. He said the knowledge economy is less about benevolence and cooperation and more about creating advantages in the region, which, by definition, tends to make the endeavor competitive.

“The Charleston Digital Corridor is a great success story in the state,” he said. “But Ernest is not specifically in it to make money. Charleston also has ThinkTEC, and Columbia has EngenuitySC and Greenville has Innoventure. None of these things are set up to share for the sake of sharing. There’s still a dynamic where we’ll compete, not only among ourselves, but with other states and around the world. It’s a winner-take-all kind of thing.

“(Eighteenth-century economist and philosopher) Adam Smith once said that you don’t get your dinner from the butcher or baker out of their generosity. It takes a lot of people cooperating to get the food to the grocery store. It’s enlightened self interest, but it’s still about what each needs to make themselves successful.”