Why should academia, industry, and government collaborate to address the biggest challenges the world is facing?

That was the question posed by Tufts University President Sunil Kumar at “Growing New England’s Next-Generation Economy,” the New England Competitiveness Conversation organized by the Council on Competitiveness. The Council is a non-partisan, nonprofit coalition of CEOs, university presidents, national laboratory directors, and labor leaders, focused on driving long-term economic and productivity growth for the nation, inclusive prosperity, and national security.

Tufts hosted the event on June 5 and 6 at Joyce Cummings Center on the Medford/Somerville campus.

Offering an answer to this question, Kumar framed his response in the context of the blue and green economies—the sectors that were the primary focus of the two-day convening.

“Innovation in the blue and green tech sectors represents strong positive externalities to society,” Kumar said to an audience of more than 100 business and nonprofit leaders, researchers, and policymakers. He defined those positive externalities as benefits derived by people and companies through the direct efforts of others. And, as no single industry has sufficient incentive to make the full level of investment needed to achieve the socially optimal outcome, “[most] industries will under-invest,” Kumar said. The result? “Academia and government have to step in so that the full benefit to society can be [realized].”

“What I’m hoping is that today’s conference will end … with enough handshakes in the room so that this tripartite agreement is implemented,” Kumar said.

As signaled by Kumar’s remarks, the convening (one in a series of similar Council on Competitiveness events held around the U.S.) had as its objective to gather leaders from industry, academia, national laboratories, labor, and government to consider the hurdles and opportunities for New England in setting the national and global pace in the blue and green economies—and the critical importance of all those leaders cooperating to ensure New England’s continued competitiveness and economic growth.

“Our intention in convening in New England was clear: in a $30 trillion economy, featuring and driven by the ideas of more than 300 million Americans, this region is distinctive, having found ways to partner across borders and boundaries to enhance the capacities and capabilities of innovation,” said the Honorable Deborah L. Wince-Smith, Council on Competitiveness President and CEO. “One of the key reasons we chose the Tufts campus was to explore the best and ‘next’ practices bubbling up in this region, to learn from all in the region, and to deploy successes here across our great nation.”

University of Vermont, Colby College, and Western New England University served as co-hosts for the New England Competitiveness Conversation, as part of an effort to represent the broader regional landscape and to facilitate substantive dialogue reflecting the diverse perspectives of states, communities, and higher education institutions of varying scales and missions.

The Critical Ingredient: Collaboration

According to the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, investments in research and development in New England average nearly $84 billion annually. In addition, as home to some of the nation’s leading research universities, the region is distinctively positioned for research-driven innovation across various sectors. With its abundance of talent and resources (and its extensive shoreline), the northeastern U.S. is primed both to meet the nation’s growing energy needs and to address the challenges presented by a warming planet, advantages recognized by many in attendance at the convening.

Over the course of the event at Tufts, keynote speakers and panel discussions examined the key features of the region’s innovation economy—talent, technology, investment, and infrastructure—that, in turn, underpin the region’s current and future success. Other sessions spotlighted collaborations and best practices from within the region's innovation ecosystem that bring together startups and established firms, research universities and other institutions, and government.

The green economy includes commercial activities in agriculture, forestry, electric grids, battery storage, and clean energy. The blue economy encompasses maritime-related businesses in shipping and oceanic trade, offshore energy, fishing, maritime security, aquatourism, and aquaculture.

One featured speaker, Mark Peters, president and CEO of the MITRE Corporation, spoke about his organization’s role in the national defense research and engineering ecosystem. Chartered in the public interest, MITRE operates federally funded research and development centers engaged in systems engineering and applied research and development and provides technical expertise to government agency sponsors. The organization has, with federal funding, played a pivotal role in developing air-defense radar systems and space technologies. That collaboration with federal agencies, Peters said, is crucial for building a robust manufacturing base. Peters stressed the critical role of collaborative research and systems thinking in advancing U.S. competitiveness.

Peters also addressed the importance of investment in the science and innovation pipeline, from discovery research to commercialization and everything in between. He acknowledged the “valleys of death” and other challenges to the pipeline. “But partnerships around this room are going to help break down those barriers,” he said. “We all have to understand ... what our incentives are, what we're trying to accomplish, and work together in partnership, and then come up with common goals and really drive forward.”

In his keynote address, Jon Mitchell, mayor of New Bedford, Mass., detailed his city’s catalyzing of projects that prioritize research, data, and state-of-the-art technology, driving toward the establishment of a regional marine tech hub. The nation’s largest commercial fishing port, New Bedford, according to Mitchell, is now aggressively pursuing offshore wind energy.

Mitchell listed the elements of New Bedford’s approach to competition, including leaning into the locational advantages and his administration’s relentless pursuit of partnerships and collaborations. The third element, he said, is the obligation of government to meet its citizens’ expectations: “providing the services, doing it affordably, being transparent, being ‘upright and skillful,’" Mitchell said, quoting John Adams. Local governments must “nurture a high quality of life,” he said, in order to attract entrepreneurs to their communities to “innovate and start and then scale and do all the things that you would hope that a business would do.”

In a panel focused on best practices across maritime industries, Steven Fox, a partner at the venture capital firm Propeller, said that the global ocean economy could grow to $3 trillion by 2030. Much of that growth, Fox said, will come from aquaculture—the cultivation of fish and plants in controlled environments—as well as from offshore wind energy and defense technology. Fox also anticipates development around coastal resilience and adaptation strategies—development that Fox expects to drive multibillion dollar markets in the U.S.

Fox also invoked technology-based solutions to climate change, such as living sea walls and ocean carbon sequestration, as offering high-potential opportunities for reversing the effects of greenhouse gases through the power of the ocean. These technologies, he said, are “our world’s super-heroine when it comes to moderating the climate.”

“That Has to Be the New Model”

A common theme was the critical need for regulatory reform. “These investments are so massive, they’re going to have to happen in stages,” said Andrew Hargens, chief development officer at Massport. Hargens stressed the critical nature of communication between state and local agencies as public-private partners move to follow through on blue tech projects: “We’re working closely with the city of Boston in conversations that perhaps wouldn’t have happened a few years ago. Regulatory reform is critical, because some of the solutions require, frankly, technological innovation that just wouldn’t be possible today.”

Rockford Weitz, professor of maritime studies and director of the Maritime Studies Program at the Fletcher School at Tufts, echoed Hargens’s thoughts on the need for changes to regulation, specifically in the way of permitting reform.

“We have to start doing things faster,” Weitz said. “That involves stakeholder engagement, and to try to do it as smartly and broadly as possible. Here in New England, you have small states, so how do we do it regionally so it’s not one state after the other? There’s a huge regulatory opportunity that I think would help drive innovation.”

In a video message highlighting the role of Congress to uphold support for the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and other agencies, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) addressed recent federal cuts head-on: “If America is going to continue to lead the world in innovation, it is essential that Congress reverse the harmful and arbitrary cuts and layoffs directed by the new administration, and I'm committed to doing just that.”

During the convening’s final panel, "From Vision to Action: A Long-term Strategy for Place-making Innovation Across New England,” Sunil Kumar cited a fundamental flaw in the innovation ecosystems established by the longstanding government/academic research compact. Those ecosystems were inevitably built around the universities, he noted, which meant many companies and communities were left out of their successes.

Using the phrase “the teal economy,” Kumar observed that the “future of the green is in the blue,” referring to the importance of going to communities like New Bedford and other coastal areas of the region to source sustainability solutions, rather than requiring those communities come to the universities.

Referring to the post-World War II high-tech cluster established within the Route 128 corridor around Boston, Kumar said that recreating that model would be a mistake. “The answer is not many Rte. 128’s in the country,” he said. “We have to go to … the shore rather than insist that the shore come to us. That has to be the new model.”

Another benefit of that model, Kumar said, is that it empowers regions to make the most of its distinctive geographies, which, for New England, includes the shoreline and the opportunities it presents. “We therefore must worry first locally,” he said. “If we … keep thinking we'll solve problems for the world, we will exclude our local economy, and we will not do what we need to do.”