Toward a Sustainable Technopolis - Technopolis: Best Practices for Science and Technology Cities - page 169

3.4 Sustainable Technopolis Initiatives

In all but the most blessed regions, sustained initiatives are a necessary condition
for ultimate regional success. By the late 1990s, several local initiatives had shown
excellent results in Austin, Texas. Start-up and established companies in software,
equipment for oil exploration and semiconductor manufacturing, and computers
were flourishing. A number of these initiatives' movers and shakers had done well
financially; they were tempted to say, ''I've got mine, buddy, good luck with
yours.'' There was, in fact, less public sentiment in favor of continued civic
initiatives for entrepreneurship. Good had proven to be the enemy of better; people
were content. The present author was not inclined to fight an uphill battle to
continue the initiatives. Another civic leader, however, argued against resting on
our laurels, insisting the public-private cooperative initiatives were needed ''now
more than ever''. Of course, the Internet bubble burst shortly after that, proving
him right. Another impressive Austin leader now says, ''Every morning I ask
myself, what I can do today to make Austin the best place in the world to live.'' 2
Through the efforts of these gentlemen and others, Austin launched new initiatives
for clean energy and for the computer gaming industry. The gaming initiative is
flourishing today, and several energy companies have been launched.
There are no overnight successes. The technological renaissance of Austin,
Texas, took 25 years—and by some yardsticks, much longer. The transformation
of a region by means of technology entrepreneurship is a long-term process, and it
is not unusual for a crisis to catalyze a region's entrepreneurial economy. Thus a
long-lived regional initiative may be necessary, if only to ensure that the initiative
organization is there to catch the crisis (whenever it may happen) and bend it to
constructive ends.
Mukherjee (Mukherjee 2005 ) shows how the same pattern of government
investment, slow infrastructure, and entrepreneurial development, followed by a
crisis-generated opportunity (the Y2K problem) spurred Bangalore's growth in the
twenty-first century. Mukherjee adds, ''The 'sudden' buzz in Bangalore is actually
just a new chapter in a 100-year-old saga. No amount of planning could have
telescoped the process into 10 years.''
A crisis in food production, accompanied by sharp increase in population,
caused the launch of Greece's trade with Sicily, and thence the ''rocketing'' Greek
economy of the sixth through fourth century (Hall 1998 , p. 49).
Crises are not part of conventional cluster theory, which instead emphasizes a
critical mass of suppliers and competitors. Critical mass was important for Austin
and Bangalore, but it was not the whole story.
Three anecdotes, of course, do not prove that crisis is a needed ingredient.
However, Portland, Oregon and Palma de Mallorca are instances of 'no crisis, no
entrepreneurial transformation.' Even Washington, D.C., with its amazing col-
lection of technology companies already attracted to the US federal money faucet,

2

These two leaders were, respectively, Pike Powers and Jim Ronay .