(TNS) — It was only fitting that Gov. Ned Lamont announced Connecticut’s latest tech development efforts on Wednesday at the Yale University Innovation Summit, which was attended by both University of Connecticut President Radenka Maric and Yale University President Peter Salovey (just a few more weeks to go).
The Innovation Clusters Program aims to commit $100 million over the next five years to match private capital with project funding to build the state’s tech ecosystem. The money could be used for a variety of ideas, including lab space, operational support for up-and-coming companies, and supercomputing data centers — all designed to further develop Connecticut’s already strong industries.
Target areas include you know, advanced manufacturing, genetics and genomics, drug development, finance and insurance technology.
You all know the history, as Mr. Lamont related it to a friendly audience at the Yale School of Management, the same place where he earned his Master of Business Administration some 44 years ago.
“We used to be the most entrepreneurial state in the country,” the governor told a crowd of several hundred at the summit. “We were pretty good. We’ve stagnated a little bit.”
The good news, Lamont said, is that “over the last five, 10 years, we’ve seen more innovation, more new startups, more job creation, more people moving to our state than ever before.”
The question now is whether this latest effort will deliver the Holy Grail of creating a ton of jobs in the home state in a way that previous tech efforts have failed to do. There are reasons for optimism, but also reasons to remain skeptical.
Wednesday’s announcement positioned quantum technology and computing as a unifying vision for how the state aims to build its tech infrastructure. Key to that is a consortium called Quantum CT, formed last year by Yale University and the University of Connecticut, which is currently preparing an application for a $166 million grant from the National Science Foundation.
Connecticut has secured a small planning grant to launch the effort at the end of 2022, which bodes well for bigger funding, Malick said in an interview.
Maric, who worked in technology development for decades before being named president of the University of Connecticut, believes quantum science will revolutionize applications of artificial intelligence and be “bigger than computer science was in the ’80s and ’90s.” As a professor, Maric said quantum “describes the behavior of energy and matter at the atomic and subatomic level,” and that quantum computers, which use lasers and photon detectors rather than silicon processors, will change the game at lightning speeds.
“The question is, how do we position our state and our economy to educate our people, to innovate and to be a leader,” Malick said. “Is Connecticut going to get ahead of the game or will it fall behind?”
She added, “The goal is to transform Connecticut’s economy and workforce.”
Daniel O’Keefe, Lamont’s commissioner of economic and community development, explained the goals of the grant program, which will begin with his department issuing a request for information Monday to businesses, nonprofits and educational institutions.
“We want to be flexible. We don’t believe it’s the government’s role to tell us what the market should do. We want the market to come to us,” O’Keefe said. “We want the market to think bigger. We want larger, more transformative investments.”
If the term Innovation Cluster Program sounds familiar, that’s because it is. Every governor since at least Gov. Lowell P. Weicker Jr., except for Gov. Jody M. Rell, has poured billions of dollars into a grand plan to develop the state’s high-tech industries. Former Gov. John G. Rowland called his effort the Cluster Program and hired the godfather of industrial clusters, Harvard University’s Michael E. Porter, to power it.
Former Gov. Dannel P. Malloy spent hundreds of millions of dollars on biotechnology and life sciences, spending $300 million just to move the Jackson Laboratory from Maine to Farmington.
Ultimately, the thousands of jobs that were created from these programs never materialized. In many cases, the startups relocated to Boston and other mature tech regions. And more recently, CT mirrorIn her story on Wednesday’s announcement, reporter Erica Phillips noted the lack of success of the state’s “Innovation Places” and “Innovation Corridors” programs.
That history gives us reason to temper our joy, but there are also signs that this time will be different.
There has long been friction and turf warfare between Yale, the University of Connecticut, and the state government, but those issues appear to have disappeared: Quantum CT, for example, is co-led by Pamir Alpay, vice president for research at the University of Connecticut, and Michael Clare, vice president for research at Yale.
“We have to decide how we can contribute to our state and how we can work together,” Malick told me, explaining that Yale will take the lead in interdisciplinary applications of quantum computing and life sciences, while the University of Connecticut will take the lead in cybersecurity, materials science, aerospace, and insurance, with a lot of overlapping fields.
The spirit of unity felt real at Yale on Wednesday. On the day Yale announced his successor, Mr. Lamont declared it “Peter Salovey Day,” praising the outgoing social psychologist as a champion of technology development. Josh Geballe, managing director of Yale Ventures, the summit’s organizer, was once a close aide to Mr. Lamont.
Moreover, our critical mass is much larger. All of our previous programs may not have created thousands of jobs, but they have led to an increase in New Haven’s biotech companies. One session at the Yale summit hailed New Haven as “the next great innovation hub.” This reflected a certain amount of self-consciousness, but the crowd of 2,500 entrepreneurs, researchers, and funders who gathered at the summit backed up the boast.
I’ve spoken to private investors and people at Connecticut Innovations, the state’s quasi-public venture capital arm, about the ultimate goal of job creation, and they see billions of dollars of local value being created, which is a remarkable outcome in their view. Logically, that should lead to significant job creation over time.
Finally, Lamont’s “Innovation Cluster Program” is designed to generate growth smartly through a collaborative system, rather than dumping huge amounts of money on companies that may or may not create jobs. While $100 million from the state is modest for such a program, private funding, federal grants, and in-kind contributions from Yale University and the University of Connecticut could total more than $400 million over 10 years.
Sure, we’ve seen this before, but Lamont, citing Walter Isaacson’s biography, talked about “playing to your strengths” and thinking broadly and creatively — Steve Jobs used calligraphy and Albert Einstein used violin music — and that’s the right way to think. Economic development is more likely to be successful when ideas are at the heart of it, not just money faucets.
“We have to work with the private sector to make investments in places where Connecticut really has an advantage,” Lamont said.
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