In 2010, David Shaffer, a senior fellow for the Rockefeller Institute of Government, and David Wright, Director of Urban and Metropolitan Studies at SUNY Albany, published a study on how institutions of higher education are working to foster economic development in their regions.
Universities, according to the report, are providing knowledge-based services to businesses and employers. They are also helping businesses to translate university research into opportunities to make money. Healthcare innovations spurred by the Affordable Care Act are creating a perfect storm of economic opportunities for universities and hospitals.
For example, Vanderbilt University Medical Center has created an "academic affiliation" with West Tennessee Healthcare (WTH), which serves nearly 500,000 patients throughout 18 Tennessee counties, including providing healthcare at Jackson-Madison County General Hospital.
Under the agreement, the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center and WTH's new Kirkland Cancer Center, which is slated to open in fall 2013, will have a framework for developing future cooperative programs.
These programs could include support of educational programs, consultative services, joint clinical research trials and enhanced oncology support program delivery. While both facilities will remain independent, they can pursue joint projects and come up with new initiatives together.
Partnerships like these are becoming more and more common. Earlier this year, Brown University created a program to help two local healthcare networks, Care New England and Lifespan, market their intellectual property through its Technology Ventures Office.
Partnerships like the ones developed by Vanderbilt and Brown could be major drivers for local economic growth in many regions of the country. They could also provide a way for higher education institutions to make up for budget cuts at the state level.
Shaffer and Wright say that universities need to leverage their strengths in knowledge creation to create tangible economic benefits. Instead of creating economic development incentives to attract business, like lower tax rates or relaxed regulations, states can start connecting higher education institutions to their economic development strategies.
In other words, as Post-It note inventor Dr. Geoffrey Nicholson once said, "Research is the transformation of money into knowledge. Innovation is the transformation of knowledge into money."
Edited by
Ashley Caputo
