Fuel to grow Pittsburgh's economy must emerge from its acclaimed hospitals and universities the way ingots once rolled off steel mill conveyor belts, business experts say.
That's the premise behind a Carnegie Mellon University Tepper School of Business "Cornerstones Symposium" today that seeks to explore how business investment depends on growing the "knowledge base, as opposed to the physical resource base," said Art Boni, a Tepper professor.
"We're seeing the emergence of a new economy," said Boni, the John R. Thorne Chair of Entrepreneurship. "It's coming from organizations that are helping to translate the research base of our institutions into economic development."
Pittsburgh's success means survival for the region, Dennis Yablonsky, secretary of the state Department of Economic Development, said during a pre-symposium news conference Monday.
He said the best investment the region could make is in improving its crumbling infrastructure because it creates local construction jobs and increases demand for supplies such as concrete and steel.
Researchers, businesses and officials in Pittsburgh, specifically, should work to make the city a "world leader in the development of clean, renewable energy" such as solar power and environmentally friendly green buildings.
The daylong symposium "Entrepreneurial Pittsburgh: Building Bridges to a City's New Future" comes at an auspicious time.
A Money Tree report released this month showed venture capitalists funneled $198 million to the greater Pittsburgh region in 2007. An analysis from PriceWaterhouseCoopers estimated the region's venture capital share grew more than 500 percent in the past decade, making it the second-fastest rate in the nation behind New Mexico.
It's a great start, but it's only a small share of the investment available, said John Manzetti, CEO of the Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse, a medical sciences business incubator in South Oakland.
Venture capitalists pumped $29.4 billion into the economy nationwide last year.
"The growth is significant, but there's a lot more to go," Manzetti said. "The more technology that spins out of the universities, the more opportunities and jobs -- jobs that allow the hundreds of Ph.D.s and M.D.s coming out of the universities to stay in the region."
For example, the supply chain of brain power in Pittsburgh has helped to revolutionize artificial heart research, said Dr. Robert L. Kormos, medical director of the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine, a joint University of Pittsburgh and University of Pittsburgh Medical Center program.
Collaboration between medical researchers at UPMC, Pitt and the McGowan Institute led to the creation of the HeartMate II, an artificial heart that has been placed in 880 patients, Kormos said.
It could get Food and Drug Administration approval as a bridge before heart transplantation this year, he said.
"Through that collaboration, we've been able to introduce into the heart failure community a very viable solution to end-stage heart failure," he said.
Medical innovations can boost the region's economy, because medical device companies flock here to work with cutting-edge researchers, he said.
International businesses outside the medical community have recognized the talent and research coming from Pittsburgh's universities, said Vaughn Gilbert, a spokesman for Westinghouse Electric Co.
Westinghouse's choice to remain in Western Pennsylvania and create more than 3,000 jobs in the past three years is among the success stories today's symposium will highlight.
The reasons behind Westinghouse's decision are two-fold, Gilbert said: State development officials offered $6 million to entice the company to build a $200 million headquarters in Cranberry; and proximity to "Carnegie Mellon, Pitt and Penn State was important to us in terms of (hiring) new talent."
CMU's Boni said in order to succeed, Pittsburgh must continue to attract foreign investment from companies such as Westinghouse and medical device companies MEDRAD and Respironics.
"We need to celebrate our success but not victory," Boni said.
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