Havana on the Schuylkill
Havana on the Schuylkill
Philadelphia continues to export brain power. Tin the Amazon bid prompt a new way of thinking to keep information technology here?
May. 10, 2018
With the prospect of $five billion infusion and priceless publicity in the offing, the 20 cities on Amazon's HQ2 shortlist are alternately strutting and supplicating before the online colossus with courting rituals that would put the greater sage-bickering to shame. All other things being equal, Philadelphia has merely a five pct chance of sealing the deal, but long odds notwithstanding, this moment presents a unique opportunity for our city to accept serious municipal inventory around a central question: what exercise nosotros take to offer?
To the uninitiated, Philly is known for the Liberty Bell, cheese steaks and obnoxious sports fans. Most of us locals are beyond tired of this hackneyed sketch (though that hasn't made u.s. whatever less obnoxious every bit sports fans), but if we're being brutally honest with ourselves, what is there, really, that distinguishes our large city from any other in a way that ought to brand us a heart of cultural and commercial gravity? In the spirit of brutal honesty, nosotros have to reckon with the fact that Philadelphia is the poorest of the ten most populous cities in the country. More than than a quarter of Philadelphians live beneath the federal poverty line, and most 200,000 subsist on incomes at or beneath half of the federal poverty level.
To say null of the individual struggles that so many of our neighbors suffer just to brand it from one day to the next, the invidious effects of this entrenched poverty are pervasive. Blighted neighborhoods, poor public health practices, rampant opioid addiction, underfunded schools and sub-par educational attainment are all pistons in the perpetual motion car of immiseration.
The sobering lowlight is that this social tragedy plays out nether the shadows of the Comcast building and at the perimeters of the campus of the University of Pennsylvania, simply two of Philadelphia'due south not bad engines of wealth and innovation. To be certain, institutions similar Comcast and Penn aren't the cause of our poverty trouble, but as corporate citizens who have profited in no small-scale part thanks to the resources and benefits provided by the metropolis, they just as surely have a responsibility to reciprocate by helping to break the cycle of poverty.
Marketplace Street may not be dotted with rusty former Soviet Ladas, but we share with Cuba the problem of exporting our most valuable resource; in Philadelphia's case, information technology's not cigars but brainpower.
To ensure that Philadelphia is a city that doesn't merely survive, just thrives into the future, our business, academic and civic powerhouses demand to play an active role in shaping a sustainable ecosystem that reinforces itself. A rough only evocative analogy here is Cuba. To the western capitalist world, Cuba is recognized for its exquisite cigars, the communist nation'south most popular export. Just the Cuban homeland remains in a state of perpetual disrepair, its infrastructure deteriorating, and its people looking for a dynamism that has pulled many away from the isle's stagnant economy.
Market place Street may not exist dotted with rusty old Soviet Ladas, but nosotros share with Cuba the trouble of exporting our most valuable resource; in Philadelphia'southward case, it's not cigars merely brainpower. Our community of peak flight colleges and universities excels at drawing the best and brightest students from abode and abroad, merely struggles to keep them here after graduating. Our higher education organization has no trouble cultivating talent; it's preventing that talent from taking root elsewhere that seems to elude us.
This intellectual giveaway is peculiarly vexing in the context of the HQ2 sweepstakes. Both Amazon and Mayor Jim Kenney were tight-lipped about the substance of a March coming together on the subject, merely according to a recent Wall Street Journal report, Amazon's reps have asked city leaders for "breakout sessions on teaching and talent," probing for information not simply on tech graduates, only on local high-schoolers' Saturday scores.
Questions like those should have our pro-Amazon camp tugging anxiously at their collars. The pct of Philadelphians with bachelor's degrees hovers just effectually 29 pct, essentially below the national average. Clearly Philly is producing no shortage of college graduates; we're just struggling to get them to stay here. Although we do have one of the fastest-growing millennial populations among large cities, trends advise that fact is a effect of astronomically high rents in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and other post-collegiate destinations with more cachet. Nosotros shouldn't accept this status as a bedroom community for twenty-somethings, particularly when those twenty-somethings decamp for suburban school districts equally shortly every bit their starting time kids are born.
Counterintuitively, according to a recent Chamber of Commerce survey of more than 1,200 young professionals and students, a majority of Philadelphia'south college seniors are confident in the local task market, but that doesn't necessarily translate into a decision to remain in the local marketplace. Our 20 th century "eds and meds" economy is highly regarded, as well it should be, just the products of these industries are necessarily for domestic and consign consumption alone; they don't make Philly a magnet for anything.
It's not an either/or proposition when it comes to tackling social bug and maximizing shareholder value. It's a matter of mindset and prioritization. If we tin close downward our schools for a $2 million parade for the Super Bowl champion Eagles, can't nosotros publicly gloat the groundbreaking work of Penn Medicine'due south Dr. Carl June?
In the post-manufacturing 1960's, the disappearance of factory jobs and the ensuing white flight hollowed out our economic base. Only whereas existent estate development, police force firms and regional banking filled that void in Philly, other cities without the benefit (or perhaps, the detriment) of an existing infrastructure like ours cleared peach orchards and scrub bush to build visionary new centers of technological innovation. From the microprocessor to the internet to the app-based sharing economy, testify me a game-changing technological disruption, and I'll show you lot a cloud of grit kicked up in our face past an another region passing u.s.a. by. Our politicians and policy makers refuse to abandon an outdated industrial era attitude to economic growth. The sad irony is that many of the great innovators stirring upward all that grit in San Francisco and Austin were educated correct here in our ivory towers, but couldn't wait to flee a political environment that but throws up roadblocks to inventiveness and assuming thinking.
Equally the tech industry continues its onslaught across all sectors, mid-Atlantic graduates with Stem degrees are willing to face significantly greater competition for the opportunity to build a career in Silicon Valley or 1 of the country'due south other few tech meccas. Of class, megafirms like Comcast and Aramark take been greatly successful for their own accounts, simply they haven't really attracted peers or created a meaningful multiplier effect in Philadelphia. If you're a millennial and want a chore in advanced manufacturing, robotics, AI, blockchain or any other manufacture of the contempo past, nowadays or time to come, you'll be setting your sights westward. The simple truth is that our corporate and venture communities and our public policy car take non done nearly enough to cultivate the fertile terrain that would allow the next Philadelphian to build the next Apple in her Fishtown garage.
The Sleeping room of Commerce report prescribes a range of development and retention tactics that companies ought to accept to proceed skilled young workers here. Engaging mentors to work with young professionals to define career pathways and a transparent development plan are amid the key strategies identified to help these individuals envision and pursue lifelong careers in the Delaware Valley. Mentorship is important, as far as information technology goes, only Philadelphia needs to be thinking big picture if we desire existent transformation and to go along the pistons of Philadelphia's collective brainpower churning. From a macro-perspective, nosotros simply demand more majuscule investment, combined with a coordinated exploitation of Philadelphia's breathtaking capacity for innovation. That ways demanding substantive cross-pollination between our corporate and academic enquiry communities, and a political attitude that emphasizes light-green lights over stop signs.
We may or may not country Amazon, but even a miss is an opportunity. Why not earmark the public funds that would otherwise pave the fashion for HQ2 for catalytic investment in entrepreneurship initiatives and public improvements?
Nosotros may or may not land Amazon, but even a miss is an opportunity. Why non earmark the public funds that would otherwise pave the manner for HQ2 for catalytic investment in entrepreneurship initiatives and public improvements? For example, working millennials are demanding walkable neighborhoods, comprehensive and functioning public transit systems, and access to things like prophylactic bike lanes to get to and from piece of work and around town. Even if a massive infrastructural upgrade is undertaken primarily for the benefit of young professionals and their employers, the positive externalities for Philadelphians writ large are cocky-axiomatic.
And it isn't only enhanced amenities that millennials are demanding from employers. The new generation of professionals wants their employers not just to do well, just to exercise practiced. A 2022 Society for Human Resources study revealed that more than than half of young professionals are motivated by a meaningful corporate social responsibleness ethos. Further, it'southward a proven reality that companies with robust social responsibleness policies have stronger bottom lines and better records of employee recruitment and retention.
These facts ought to exist the mantra of a collaborative initiative led by our almost powerful corporate and governmental actors to fight blight, inequality and to atomic number 82 the charge on lifting our boyfriend Philadelphians out of poverty. It's not an either/or proposition when information technology comes to tackling social issues and maximizing shareholder value. It's a thing of mindset and prioritization. If we tin close downwardly our schools for a $2 1000000 parade for the Super Bowl champion Eagles, can't we publicly celebrate the groundbreaking work of Penn Medicine's Dr. Carl June? (You may exist asking yourself, "Who is Dr. Carl June?" To which I answer, "Exactly.")
Philadelphia can't recreate the climate or clone the venture capitalists of Palo Alto or Mountain View, nor should nosotros try. What our region lacks in reliably pleasant atmospheric condition and a stable of eager venture capitalists, it more than than makes upward for in pinnacle flight educational institutions, major corporate headquarters and a unique proximity to the country's main hubs of finance and policy. It will take more than coordination between our business and civic sectors than we have yet to run across, but there'southward no reason we can't stand on our own as a new tech mecca in the 21 st century. Philadelphia isn't Silicon Valley, but that doesn't mean we take to be Cuba.
Ajay Raju, an attorney and philanthropist, is chairman of DilworthPaxson and a founder/board member of The Citizen.
Source: https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/havana-on-the-schuylkill/
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