A favorite Erie-focused blog of mine, Global Erie, had a post last week about the importance of encouraging innovation.

Blogger Peter Panepento isn’t the first person to make this observation about our region. Several years ago, The (Toledo) Blade wrote a three-part series, Business As Usual, that built on the work of two Cleveland-based Federal Reserve economists that linked a state’s economy to patents per-capita. In other words- the more creativity and innovation, the better off a state will be.

(The second strongest predictor of economic success, the Fed study found is, not surprisingly, the percent of high school and college graduates in a state.)

I’ve often said I believe our cities, despite their many problems (or maybe because of them), are very good innovators and problem-solvers – think of land banking in Flint, Michigan; housing for artists in Braddock, Pennsylvania; urban farms in Detroit, shrinking the city in Youngstown, I could go on.

I’m going to pose the same question Peter Panepento asked Global Erie readers: are we doing enough to cultivate new ideas? What more should our states and cities be doing?

-KG

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