Turning Cities into Innovation Centers

Saul Kaplan says cities should be transformed into innovation centers to stay competitive and become the venue of a "new economic conversation".

1 minute read

March 8, 2010, 6:00 AM PST

By Nate Berg


"Cities should be living labs. If cities become innovation hot spots, new investment and jobs will be created. We need ongoing R&D for new transformative models and systems. Developing a 21st century innovation economy depends on it and would also enable solutions for the big system challenges we face, such as health care, education, workforce development, and energy sustainability. These are system challenges that will not be fixed with incremental tweaks. We must design, demonstrate, and deploy new system approaches to these challenges. And the solutions should be coming from our cities."

He argues selecting target cities to create innovation hotspots that can serve as national and international models of new ideas and economic experiments.

Monday, March 1, 2010 in Business Week

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