South Carolina Israeli Trade Mission

By George Fletcher

For the past six months, I have had the privilege of working with a group called the South Carolina/Israeli collaboration. Chaired by Charleston’s Jonathon Zucker, the group is working with the American Israeli Chamber in Atlanta on partnerships between the SC research universities and Israeli universities, as well as establishing business relationships in six clusters. New Carolina was invited to join the collaboration because of our data base on clusters. The six target clusters are Biomedical, Advanced Materials, Sustainable Systems (water, energy, agriculture), Transportation (auto, aerospace), Defense/Security and Insurance and Health Information Technology. SC obviously has signficant strengths in these clusters.

Educational session were held at the Greenville Chamber and the Columbia Chamber on July 27th and at the CRDA offices in Charleston on July 28th. Background information on the collaboration was presented. Israel produces more high tech companies than anyplace other than Silicon Valley. Innovation that came from Israel included the DVD, the jump drive, the cellphone, voice over internet, voice mail, plasma and LCD TV’s, firewalls and many other innovations in medical devices, security and weapons. The culture for innovation was documented in the book Startup Nation which I highly recommend.

The collaboration would like to recruit a group of key SC people for a trade mission on the week before Thanksgiving. Details on the mission, itineraries and participant applications are on a recently created website http://sc-israel.org.

As many of you know, I am a recovering engineer who’s expertise was in water and wastewater. During the proposed week of the trade mission, Israel is hosting WATEC, an international water conference that will attract 20,000 people. Israel uses every drop of water 4 times. They have planted 450 million trees in the desert. They invented drip irrigation. The conference will showcase some of the Israeli innovations in water. Over the past two days, we have had 20 of the leaders in water meet with Booky Oren, the conference chairman and one of the great Israeli private sector innovators in water technologies. I believe that a separate partnership will develop in the area of water and wastewater reuse.

Thanks to Tom Glaser of the American Israeli Chamber of Commerce, and to Jonathon Zucker, CEO of Intertech, for driving this effort.

Entrepreneurship Conversation Leads to High Impact Recommendations

By Garry Powers

Director of Economic Development Initiatives
CTC Public Benefit Corporation

New Carolina’s High Impact Entrepreneurship conference was held on April 7.  About 125 participants from both urban and rural counties throughout the state met to have a conversation on how we can work together to build a stronger base of homegrown firms.

Our goals for the conference were to:

• Learn more about the types of homegrown firms that are creating most of the jobs and wealth in the state.
• Understand the factors that can help high impact firms expand in our state.
• Obtain information about the entrepreneurship strategies that work in other regions of the country.
• Discuss some specific steps that we can take in South Carolina to promote high impact entrepreneurship.

1. Who is Creating Jobs?
Research presented by USC professor Dr. Doug Woodward indicated that:

• Small businesses with fewer than 20 employees are creating a disproportionately large share of South Carolina’s jobs.
• In any four-year period during the last 10 years, 2.5 percent of all South Carolina-based “high impact” firms created almost all of the net new jobs in the state.
• “High impact” firms are spread across industry sectors. 
• High-impact firms are highly urban. 
• About half are in traded sectors of the economy. 
• South Carolina is not growing as many small firms into big firms as our neighboring states.

2. What are the Needs of High Impact Companies?
Based on interviews with South Carolina’s high growth firms and economic developers in the state, six of the most critical constraints to growth fall into the following categories:

•  Lack of Access to Affordable Financing
• Lack of High-level Management Talent 
• High Business-related Taxes in Some Areas 
• Need for more Collaboration Related to Innovation 
• A Less than Robust Entrepreneurial Culture 
• Difficulties in Attracting and Retaining High-level Professional and Technical Workers.

3. What Strategies Work in Other Regions?
Kurt Dassell with the Monitor Group, a global economic development consulting firm, indicated that many regions have difficulties implementing entrepreneurship strategies because: (1) they try and fail to become the next Silicon Valley, and (2) they do not understand their particular region’s strengths and weaknesses and - consequently - they do not pursue solutions that are tailored to their regions.  He recommended that South Carolina should focus on a small number of initiatives designed to increase the base of management talent and to improve access to financing.  

4. What are the Next Steps?
In collaboration with the economic development community and the organizations that provide services to entrepreneurs, New Carolina has pledged to identify three or four recommendations on strategies that can help to build a stronger base of homegrown firms.   Stay tuned.  We are still digesting the information from the conference.  
There was one clear message from conference participants, though.  They identified a strong need for a highly visible statewide “portal” that is recognized as the one place that entrepreneurs and service providers can go to find resources and information.  That is an idea that will be explored further.

5. One Other Success Story
During the conference, representatives from the organizations that currently operate or plan to open an incubator met to form the South Carolina Incubator Association.  Thanks to Joel Stevenson, the Executive Director of the USC/Columbia Technology Incubator, for taking the lead on this initiative. 

Liberty Fellows Summit

One of the most dynamic programs in SC is the Liberty Fellows.  Founded by Hayne Hipp, the Liberty Fellows take 20 to 25 of the best and brightest young South Carolinians (ages 30 to 45) each year, and put them through an intensive two year leadership program.  Partners include the Aspen Institute and Wofford College.  I am happy to say that Amy Love was selected for the Class of 2012, the 7th class of Fellows.

On November 30, the Liberty Fellows held their first summit.  It was in Columbia and 750 people attended.  The keynote speaker was Dan Heath, co-author of the book "Switch."  The book provides a method of implementing change.  After his lecture, each table of 10 was asked to apply the methodology to specific problems in one of four areas:  Economic Development, Health and Environment, Public Policy and Education. 

My table discussed Economic Development, and specific the structure for Economic Development in the State.  The major conclusion was that we need a Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy in SC.  Governor Haley talked about a 10 year plan during her campaign.  Milliken CEO Joe Salley (also a Liberty Fellow) has called for a comprehensive strategy. 

The Monitor Group in 2005 produced a document called "A Strategic Plan for South Carolina."  It was built around clusters and task forces.  The problem with the plan was that it did not recognize the major economic development effort in the state which has been and is recruiting new industry.  SC has been very good at this for a long time.  It also did not recognize the role of the other partners such as Regional Alliances, the Power Team, SCRA, technical colleges, public utilities, local economic developers and others.  It did, however, recognize that Education and Workforce, Research, Distressed Areas and Entrepreneurhsip should be included in such a plan.

I hope the Liberty Fellows and the new Governor will take the opportunity to organize a way to produce one overall long term comprehensive economic development strategy for the State.

SCEDA Mid Year Meeting

Milliken CEO Joe Salley gave the luncheon speech at the SCEDA Mid Year Meeting on October 15.  He listed the various (all good) commitments of the gubnatorial candidates, but asked the question "What is our strategy?"  "What differentiates SC from other states?"  "What are our unique and valuable resources?"  "What role does the sense of place play in our overall strategy?"

Dr. Salley specifically mentioned Michael Porter and the cluster strategy.  This is not a complete strategy, but where there are robust clusters (Silicon Valley, for example), economic development takes care of itself.

He said that we need an overal  strategy that 1) addresses the above questions, and 2) outlasts the term of any one Governor.

I hope that whoever is elected Governor would ask Dr. Salley to play a role in crafting such a strategy.