Not Getting It

Politicians say the darnedest
things. In their naivete, they offer unintentionally revealing wisdom about the
world in which we live.

Consider, for example, this
doozy from U.S. Rep. Jay Inslee included in the Greater Seattle Chamber of
Commerce’s report on its recent leadership retreat on the subject of
economic-development prospects in clean energy:

“The economy of Washington
shines when there is great transition because we get technological advance
better than any other state.”

What’s remarkable about that
quote is not that Inslee uttered it-politicians have been known to spout entire
volumes of meaningless verbiage-but that the quote was considered insightful
enough to be considered part of developing a strategy for capitalizing on this
potential market.

That quote, and the attitudes
behind it, go a long way toward explaining why Washington state is in such a
predicament in figuring out what its economic base will be, and why all the
grand visions of wind turbines, algae-derived biofuel refineries and smart-grid
controllers may not do much to get it out of that fix.

We get technological advance
better than anyone else?

Oh, really? Says who?

Says us, apparently.

The scrap heap of history is
littered with the carcasses of economies and regions that had the innovation
game figured out-and may actually have, for a while, until someone else proved
better at it.

The modern American industrial
economy is largely a product of the Midwest, which, for one glorious era,
created, grew and dominated dozens of industries. While it is popular to blame
the fall of the midwestern economy on the shift of productive work to
lower-wage locales, what actually happened was that the region stopped
innovating.

Meanwhile, the American South
was not content to remain an economic backwater. Japan, South Korea and, more
recently, China were not content to stick to the menial and low-value work the
big industrial economies didn’t want. The China of today is not the China of 30
years ago. The Japan of the 1980s was not the Japan of the 1950s.

But to hear the shocked
reaction in the Puget Sound region to Boeing’s decision to locate the second
787 assembly line in South Carolina, you’d think the South hasn’t changed or
progressed in decades.

One byproduct of that decision
was to reveal this region’s ugly tendencies to provincialism, smugness and
condescension. Ripping the veneer off those underlying Northwest character
flaws could actually be beneficial if it scares the region straight.

Will it? Not if the
self-deception persists that we’re bound to succeed in new industries and
sciences because we get the whole technology advancement thing better than
anyone else. The historic record might suggest otherwise. Do we get the
internet, consumer electronics and mobile communications better than, say,
Silicon Valley? Do we get biotech better than Boston or San Diego? Heck, do we
even get the merits of concentrating academic and corporate brainpower better
than North Carolina has for decades at Research Triangle Park? And will we get
the energy business better than, say, Texas, which not only has experience on
the oil and gas side, but is also the nation’s leading producer of wind power?

Fortunately, some get the
message. Clint Wilder, contributing editor at a Portland-based research and
publishing firm, is quoted in the Chamber’s report thusly: “Everyone talks
about being a clean tech leader. We need to aggressively compete for the
companies and jobs that can just as easily go to Austin, Boston or China.”

The report also summarizes the
challenges: “Can Washington create that policy environment and make the public
investments needed to leverage research and entrepreneurial energies in the
state? And do we have the stomach to engage in that fierce competition?”

Good questions. The answers are not
encouraging as long as the state continues to lead the nation in production of
commodities no one is buying: hubris and arrogance.