Tuesday, December 08, 2009
Posted by
Ray Leach
If you were a public policy or government official and it was your job to create economic opportunity (jobs) in your community/region/state or country, would you be willing to invest in a "project" that:
- For every $1 the government invested in the new project, the proposed project was required to at least equal the states investment on day one, dollar for dollar
- For every dollar invested in this project, you also knew that not only would you get matching resources on day one but that you could also anticipate that you could get another $12 dollars for every dollar you invested from the private sector in the next five years
- For every $23,000 that you spent one time five years ago, you could create at least one job paying an annual wage of $67,000 -- meaning you could recover this investment in new payroll taxes within a 5-7 year time period, conversatively
- For every job you have created today, you have the likelihood -- with zero additional investment -- to create at least another 20 jobs both direct and indirectly over the next 15 years with this investment?
If this sounds all too good to be true -- its not. This is what the commercialization programs of Ohio's Third Frontier have done since 2002. The leadership in Ohio has understood, for the last seven years, that investments in programs that support the commercialization of technologies in Ohio make sense in the near-term, and make even more sense when looking to future economic growth opportunities five, ten, and 15 years out.
You can find proof of these numbers at
www.thirdfrontier.com via metric reports as well as by reviewing the SRI report which is available on this website.
The Third Frontier Program demonstrates how the public sector can lead to create economic growth and jobs -- it would be good for Washington to follow Ohio's playbook.
Ray Leach is CEO of JumpStart and brings his energy and leadership experiences from founding five high growth entrepreneurial and intrapreneurial endeavors in the last 20 years. Ray is a Sloan Fellow and earned an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management. He also earned a BA in Finance from the University of Akron.