Innovate Long Island

Innovation is a much-used word these days. As America faces the changing economic challenges of the global economy, it seems our national economic strength resides more than ever in our ability to innovate, to introduce something new to the world. The sense that innovation is our salvation has strong historical roots. For almost 150 years, from the stirrings of the Industrial Revolution to these early days of the Knowledge Age, America has been the world’s leader in invention, applied sciences, and social advancement. In a sense, the word “innovation” in today’s context is just a reminder that we have to continue doing what we have always done.

Few places in the nation have done so well with innovation as has Long Island. While often known for its technological inventiveness, Long Island actually has been an innovation leader in all aspects of modern life. Yes, it’s true Long Island was the place where the Lunar Landing Module was built; where Tesla and Marconi perfected wireless radio transmissions; where the co-discoverer of recombinant DNA, Dr. James Watson, has his laboratory; where bar code scanning became a business. But, Long Island also is the place where the first supermarket, King Cullen, was created; where bank credit cards took off, at Franklin National Bank; where the first suburban affordable housing project, Levittown, arose; and where the first shopping center, Roosevelt Mall, was built.

But times change, and that old question, “What have you done for me lately?”, always hangs in the air. Long Island has never rested on its past glories, and it always has dealt with change in a head-on, nothing-will-stop-us manner. In the 1980s and early 1990s, for example, Long Island suffered an economic body blow when defense downsizing cost the region about 100,000 jobs, as well as its major manufacturing industry. Many places never recover from an economic reversal of that magnitude. Long Island, however, recovered so quickly and so convincingly that its reversal of fortune came to be known among economists as the “Long Island Miracle.” The region’s economy became more diversified, more focused on smaller businesses, and consequently, even stronger and more resilient than it had ever been.

It is always better to anticipate change than merely react to it, and it was in that spirit that the Innovate Long Island project was begun. The title “Innovate Long Island” was chosen to suggest not just that Long Island needs to be at the heart of the innovation movement in America, but also that, to accomplish that, Long Island itself will have to engage in some innovation as a community. In other words, we will have to change our ways in order to be able to deal with the changes happening around us.

Innovate Long Island divided the problem of change, and anticipating our economic development needs, into four parts: Human Resources, Education, Research, and Investment. The first two areas underscore an inescapable reality of the Knowledge Age: regions with the best-educated, most creative people will be the most prosperous. They will win the economic race. Every other place will struggle and wonder why they are struggling. The future is less about brawn than it is about talent. It is about educating talent, attracting talent, and keeping talent. Economic development today is concerned more about the strength and depth of the local talent pool than it is about tax abatements. Tax abatements will only cost the community wealth if the talent the community grows sets down roots someplace else and the community’s business base cannot find the talent it needs to grow.

Growth in the Knowledge Age also requires research and investment. Innovation today is a long process, longer and more expensive than ever in history. Research requires funding, and it thrives on collaboration. Public sector scientists and private sector researchers have to have the freedom to share information, resources, even equipment to produce innovation at the pace that the global economy increasingly demands. And investment is not limited finding revenue streams. Investment also means finding ways to lower business and living costs, as well as improving the community’s infrastructure.

Innovate Long Island brought together over one hundred of Long Island’s most thoughtful, experienced, and creative minds to address the Island’s future economic needs, and what it will take to meet those needs. The project’s committees, each listed with their participants on the following pages, have produced what can only be called an innovative economic development plan for the region. Acknowledging the practical world in which the plan will have to be carried out, Innovate Long Island presents its report in a concise, easily readable series of Action Items.

The first set of Action Items addresses things that, because of their fundamental importance to the region’s economic foundation, require more urgent attention. Those items are grouped into a heading called The First Two Years, underscoring the fact that the Innovate Long Island plan is a multi-year undertaking. Ideas that will take longer to implement are grouped into the heading The Ten-Year Agenda.

More important than any individual Action Item contained in this plan is the need for Long Islanders to come together to collaborate on their own future. Innovate Long Island is meant to provide a structure on which the region can build its economic future, and a vehicle for region-wide collaboration. The LIA hopes that this plan will be used by Long Islanders who care about, and have a vision of, the region’s future with those purposes in mind.


Matthew T. Crosson
President
Long Island Association
September, 2006

For text of the complete "Innovate Long Island" report, click here.