EDA Partners with National Governors Association to Accelerate Economic and Job Growth
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Q&A: Partnering to Accelerate Advanced Manufacturing in America
EDA Partners with National Governors Association to Accelerate Economic and Job Growth
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Mary Jo Waits, director of NGA’s Economic,
Human Services, and Workforce Division.
In September 2011, eight states—California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Kansas, Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania—were selected to participate in the National Governors Association (NGA) Policy Academy, “Making” Our Future: Encouraging Growth in Manufacturing through Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Investment.” The following month, representatives from these states began participating in a yearlong series of meetings and collaborative exercises designed to foster innovation, rejuvenate manufacturing, create jobs, and grow regional economies.
The NGA Policy Academy was funded by the U.S. Economic Development Administration (EDA) and the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology Manufacturing Extension Program (NIST MEP).
Mary Jo Waits, director of NGA’s Economic, Human Services, and Workforce Division, recently answered some questions about the Policy Academy and its value, both to the eight participating states and to other states that can draw on lessons learned.
Q: What makes the Policy Academy unique?
A: A Policy Academy is a process, not an event, facilitated through the NGA Center for Best Practices. What distinguishes it from “one-shot” meetings is that an academy brings together governor-designated teams (representatives from multiple agencies, industry, academia, nonprofits, etc.) and requires a long-term investment of time, energy, and resources in a facilitated process designed to produce tangible outcomes, such as executive orders, changes in administrative practices, and new legislation.
Q: Why was manufacturing an important focus for the yearlong Policy Academy?
Given all that is happening in manufacturing today—technological advances, a greater focus on tailor-made goods aimed at specific individuals and industry users, and the growing importance of sustainable forms of production—opportunities for the United States to lead are becoming increasingly clear. That leadership, however, will be built on a different breed of policy than the usual formula of enticing global public companies to build plants in this country. Instead, it will be built through a combination of worker education, business innovation, and public- and private-sector entrepreneurship that allows the United States to take the lead in shaping the way manufacturing addresses complex global problems, such as needs for energy, water, food, health, security, and public infrastructure.
The work of the states that participated in the NGA Policy Academy is of particular relevance because together they represent 30 percent of total U.S. manufacturing gross domestic product, one-third of U.S. manufacturing jobs, and more than 25 percent of U.S. exports of manufactured goods. And as an eight-state cohort working on similar priorities, they were able to scale up efforts and generate effects that were greater than what could have been done by a single state working alone.
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