Civil Engineering Reference
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Again on a more optimistic note, George Kozmetsky, as quoted in Inc.
Magazine, August, 1996,
No matter what field you are talking about—electronics, medical, education, the environ-
ment, entertainment—the global marketplace opens up more opportunities than I've seen in
my lifetime. Very few generations in history, perhaps not since the Renaissance, have been
accorded the opportunities this period provides. It is a profoundly different world.
3 The Regional Level of Analysis: The Case of Austin,
Texas
In the 1980s Austin was nationally, and perhaps internationally, known for being
Texas' state capital and a university town with an oil/ranching/cowboy culture.
The city was not known for creativity, entrepreneurship, start-ups, venture capital,
or High Tech. Jobs were mostly in government and education and the area could
not retain most of its educated talent. However, by the late 1990s and following
decades Austin has been ranked as the best U.S. city for business and top wealth
creator; the best U.S. city for entrepreneurship; and the most creative U.S. city
according to Richard Florida (2002). Importantly, Austin has been able to attract
creative and innovative talent from such other ''spiky'' regions including Silicon
Valley, CA, Boston, MA and worldwide.
There are certain necessary but not sufficient criteria for the success of Austin
and other ''technopolis'' regions worldwide including at the most fundamental
level with being civil societies and following the rule of law to having world-class
educational assets and a quality of life that attracts and retains talent. However, a
key reason for success of the Austin Model is results oriented public-private
collaboration of primarily local actors. The University of Texas at Austin, regional
industry, local government, and foundations/nonprofits, see in Fig.
1
.
This collaboration has been facilitated by visionaries and champions of creative
and innovative mechanisms for knowledge transfer (KT) and use; effective action-
oriented processes for making things happen; and metrics for success. The central
importance of regional collaboration or cooperation is enhanced when one realizes
that the Austin region was not and is not the BEST in the U.S. much less than the
world on a range of criteria. This is perhaps an encouraging realization for other
regions worldwide that might not have, for example, a Stanford University,
University of California at Berkeley or Harvard University and MIT, and the other
amazing wealth creation assets of Silicon Valley and Boston.
Over time Austin's institutional collaboration/cooperation/synergy has been led
by different visionaries and champions in terms of specific regional objectives that
involved civic and social entrepreneurship as well as technology entrepreneurship,
Fig.
2
.
3
Civic volunteers and champions tend to focus their efforts on linking
3
Collaboration is often associated with working with your enemy; Coordination implies more
meaningful sharing of effort/knowledge; Cooperating implies deeper sharing that would include
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