ICAD Group seeks to nurture ‘culture of innovation’

IOWA CITY - For Iowa City, going forward there will be less hunting of big game and more focus on nurturing what's already in place.

As the Iowa City Area Development Group works to develop a culture of collaboration, entrepreneurship and innovation, Mark Nolte, interim president of ICAD Group, said it's moving away from a traditional strategy that puts its efforts toward recruiting large and medium-sized employers.

“Instead of spending 80 percent of our resources to hunt elephants and bears, we want to do a better job of building the region as a place where talent wants to reside and companies will follow,” he said. “Let's help the businesses we already have to change their culture, become more innovative, and ultimately they will grow.

“We need to foster a ‘fail-friendly' environment where people are encouraged to take some risks. Many of the people in this seedling class of entrepreneurs are going to fail,” Nolte said.

“Do we pick them up, embrace them and help them move to something else or do we expunge them from the community? If we understand that failure is part of the overall process and give them another chance, more young people will want to stay here and companies will see the value of locating here.”

“When people think of innovation, they either think of a small group starting a new venture or they think of a spinoff,'' said Chuck Peters, ICAD Group chairman. “There's a tremendous amount of innovation that could occur within existing companies that needs to be nurtured and encouraged all the time.”

Peters, president and chief executive officer of The Gazette Co., believes the region, the University of Iowa and their relationship are all at inflection points - turning points followed by dramatic change with either positive or negative results.

“We have tremendous assets that are really just kind of laying there,” Peters said. “We're not utilizing them as well as we could.

“If we can truly develop this innovative and collaborative culture, we will really be Iowa's Creative Corridor. We have a lot of the ‘seedlings' of Iowa's Creative Corridor, but we have to nurture those and develop them.”

Peters is part of the task force that launched the Iowa's Creative Corridor initiative earlier this year. The need for the re-branding, he said, became apparent in the aftermath of the June 200 floods.

Visitors, he said, “told us, ‘You don't even conceive of it. You don't pay attention to these assets,'” Peters said.

“‘You don't articulate them well. You don't celebrate successes and you certainly don't connect to the rest of the world very well so they know what you have here.'

“That's what the region has to work on ....”

A key component to the success of the Creative Corridor and to ICAD's economic development plans will be the University of Iowa, Peters noted.

Universities typically encourage faculty members to have their research published in very specific scholarly journals, a practice known as “publish or perish.” Collaboration is avoided because it is viewed as diminishing the importance of a faculty member's research.

“The university system is not designed for collaboration internally, let alone collaboration with the community,” Peters said.

The appointment of UI President Sally Mason and other recent hires in key positions are strong indications that the university, too, is at an inflection point, according to Peters.

“Sally Mason came from Purdue University, which has a great reputation in regional economic development,” he said. “Barry Butler, who is marking his first year as official provost after serving as interim, came from the College of Engineering, which was a model for engagement with the community.”

He also mentioned Gail Agrawal, who joined as UI's College of Law dean in 2010, and Margaret Crocco, who started as College of Education dean in 2011.

“Sarah Gardial, who will be joining the university as dean of the Tippie College of Business on July 1, also has expressed strong interest in community engagement,” Peters said. “There also will be new deans of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and Medicine as well as a new vice president of research - all of whom will be coming in this summer.

“This is the time to create a new relationship between the university and the community as well as the economic development organizations like the ICAD Group, the Iowa City Area Chamber of Commerce and the Cedar Rapids Metro Economic Alliance. When you put all the pieces together, there's really an opportunity to build a stronger foundation.”

Nolte added that successful communities such as Austin, Texas, started out by developing strong, trusting relationships.

“You can't create an organizational chart and hope regionalism happens,” Nolte said. “People need to take the time to get to know each other.

“In Austin, there was a lot of barbecue and beer involved. Once people got to know each other, all the various constituencies left their agendas and titles at the door, and that paved the way for them to do things collectively.

“It doesn't happen overnight, and there's really no ‘silver bullet.'”

ON THE NET

Read more about the Iowa's Creative Corridor re-branding initiative: http://smgs.us/nzu