Proposal to Attract and Retain World-Class Intellect

Oregon Business Plan

Leadership Summit 2003: Shaping Oregon’s Economic Future
December 1, 2003

Proposal to Attract and Retain World-Class Intellect
By Reilly Jones

As every study notes, the key to knowledge-based business start-up growth and success is the ability to attract the concentration and collaboration of world-class intellect. I am making a near-term proposal to attract these individuals to Oregon and a long-term proposal to create an educational environment, which will foster top talent within Oregon.

Background Near-Term

There are acknowledged difficulties for the long-term success of Oregon’s bio/micro/nanotech research and industry. These difficulties fall into the categories of business start-ups and business retention.

Oregon is not currently in a leadership position in world-class intellect, necessary for high-grade business start-ups within a knowledge-based economy. It cannot afford to indulge in a prolonged bidding contest for top tier mercenary-type researchers and managers, without adversely affecting employees and/or taxpayers. Someone will ultimately have to unfairly share the burden of the on-going costs of matching all future external bids for mercenaries, in addition to the initial costs of acquiring a top tier reputation.

The key to business retention is remaining competitive globally. The chief concern is that everything; manufacturing, services, management, research, even doctoral level science and engineering education, that can be accomplished at a lower cost elsewhere, will leave Oregon sooner or later. Besides absolutely necessary provider-client face-to-face interactions, only what the state can do as well as the rest of the world will survive here. Craig Barrett, CEO of Intel Corp., recently told reporters that, “People in [China, India and Russia] are capable of doing any engineering job and any software job and any managerial job that people in the United States are capable of doing.”

When budgets are restricted at all levels of government, there is reluctance to provide what is popularly known as “corporate welfare” (income or property tax abatement, direct incentives for relocation, regulatory moratoriums, etc.). Business retention assistance is in competition with other human services and such assistance has an unproven record at industry retention over the long run. Much of our IT and electronics industries are being outsourced or leaving the state after receiving such assistance only a short time ago.

What We Are Trying To Accomplish Near-Term

The proposal I am putting forward overcomes both of these difficulties by attracting and retaining world-class intellect: researchers and managers who want to live here and will not be prone to enter the mercenary market because the legal/regulatory/public opinion atmosphere will be superior to anywhere else. This near-term proposal falls primarily under the Oregon Business Plan’s initiative to expand capacity for innovation.

MIT economics professor Lester Thurow made the critical observation in the Portland Tribune (6/27/03) that: “For the first time in history, humans can change their own genetic makeup. That may come to be seen as the most important invention in human history…. Think about it: We can change who we are. That is an incredible fundamental revolution.”

Prof. Thurow does not use the term “transhuman technologies,” but this is, in fact, what he is referring to. An internet search of “posthuman” and “transhuman” shows the ubiquity of related ideas, books, technologies, conferences and institutes. These technologies are entering the realm of practicality and must now be brought from the cultural periphery into the cultural mainstream. They have been broadly discussed in academia, research centers and cyberspace for the last decade. They include realistic technologies applicable in two primary areas: human longevity (including repair of aging processes and damage, life extension, disease and disability cures and prevention) and human enhancements (including perceptual, emotional and cognitive abilities, and physical and aesthetic attributes). A sample of core transhuman technologies would include: gene therapy, cloning, cyborging, genetic engineering, medical nanotechnology and brain-computer connectivity.

Many peripheral technologies supporting or spun off from these core technologies would aid job creation, as long as the focus on core technologies wasn’t diluted.

Transhuman technologies can be shortened to transtech for ease of use and public recognition. Transtech is a focused umbrella term covering nanotech, microtech and biotech as they relate to human enhancements and longevity. To be successful, such focus is essential. Transtech is simply defined as a basket of technologies moving humans forward to a better future, one in which longer life is enjoyed with enhanced capabilities. The simplified solution to attract and retain world-class intellect is that Oregon become Transtech Central.

Everyone wants the best for themselves, their families and friends in terms of living longer, healthier lives. This is the essence of the concept of “Quality of Life,” one of the Four P’s. Promotion of transtech is a win-win political issue given bold, confident and equitable leadership. Equitable access to emerging transtech is shaping up to be the greatest challenge to 21st century political leadership. Oregon can pave the way to just solutions.

There is a pent-up desire on the part of young, highly talented researchers to work in a state that actively encourages these technologies. This core of technologies, along with a constellation of peripheral supporting industries, will provide long-term economic stability, as long as Oregon is first to embrace it. Business retention assistance or bidding for talent becomes less crucial to success. In the absence of these highly valuable core technologies, Oregon’s existing peripheral industries will be subject to devastating global cost pressures.

Time is of the essence, because already, other jurisdictions are beginning to move in this direction. In September, legislation was passed in California supporting all types of stem cell research. Dr. Evan Snyder, who moved to California from Harvard University, explained why he chose to relocate: “The symbolic message (the legislation) sent was so exciting that it drew me and other scientists, foundation members and biotech companies to come…. If allowed to develop, because biomed is so strong, (California) could be the hub of stem-cell research in the world. But right now, we could be outflanked by other countries where good scientists can work without restrictions.”

Then, in October, Singapore announced at the close of the inaugural three-day International Stem Cell Conference, it will allow “therapeutic cloning,” where human embryos can be used for research and development within the first 14 days of their creation. Singapore is proceeding in this direction in opposition to our own federal government, but with the support of Great Britain and China.

We need to get going if we are serious about long-term bio/micro/nanotech economic development. The window on this golden opportunity for Oregon is still open, even as the window is closing on our high tech industry. This proposal is aimed squarely at two of the Four P’s: Pioneering innovation and Productivity - Business Climate. World-class intellect will come here and stay here to take advantage of the favorable research climate and livability. Oregon will set the standard for innovation and global competition.

Specific Recommendations Near-Term

In the Portland Development Commission (PDC) plan’s bioscience appendix (July 2002), these prerequisites were emphasized: “There are a number of critical factors that fuel the research engine. Key, of course, is a large cadre of world-class scientists.... The institutions together with their scientists must create an atmosphere that attracts and supports excellent research associates, graduate students, fellows and postdoctoral investigators.”

The Oregon Economic & Community Development Department (OECDD) strategic plan’s value of excellence emphasizes: “We are dynamic and creative. We embrace change and welcome new challenges.”

The Oregon Council of Knowledge and Economic Development (OCKED) made recommendations to the state legislature involving “developing programs and incentives to deepen management expertise and attract and retain top management talent.” The best way to attract top talent is to orient our political jurisdictions towards the forefront of this most important technological development of all time, “changing who we are.”

Whichever political jurisdiction openly makes itself a haven for transtech, will attract fresh, innovative talent from every quarter, along with a constellation of peripheral industries. This is the way to leapfrog the other, more advanced centers. Whichever jurisdiction is first in, with a favorable legal/regulatory/public opinion atmosphere, will sprint ahead. Oregon is renowned for its innovation: in the political sphere (initiative & referendum), the environmental sphere (bottle bill) and the ethical sphere (doctor-assisted suicide). The taxpayers have already endorsed futuristic knowledge-based industry.

Portland’s Mayor wants creative and dynamic young individuals to cluster in Portland for all kinds of synergetic benefits, from business replenishment to support of the arts community to ideas for political innovation. Embracing transtech and marketing this focus worldwide will make this happen. Oregon’s brand and marketing slogan has always been some version of the pioneering spirit, “Don’t be yourself, be better than yourself.”

You need vision and optimism, distinction and uniqueness, to understand the culture of the younger generation of researchers and inventors. You don’t need to settle for third tier; you don’t need to stake your hopes on the electronics industry as it leaves town.

The pioneers settled this territory at the end of the Oregon Trail. It is a natural progression of this pioneering spirit to advance into the new frontier of transtech. The strength of the environmental concerns in Oregon is the best argument towards ensuring that development of core transtech and its peripheral industries help the environment, not harm it. There will be strong public interest in transtech benefits as well as consequences. Political, environmental and ethical concerns are best addressed in an innovative and pioneering state such as ours.

There are many institutes that have been deeply involved with transtech for years now. Oregon simply needs to reach out to them and develop a list of specific rules and legislation that, if implemented, would constitute an “ideal” regulatory environment to stimulate this research and business formation.

The single largest area for capital formation relating to transtech is a derivative of the war, in apparent perpetuity, on terrorism. War is the greatest spur to technological innovation. The employment sector with the very lowest risk of job exportation abroad and a very high growth rate is the security, intelligence and military sector. These sectors have the most intense interest possible in transtech applications. Oregon has long run a very large deficit with the federal government; billions of dollars flow out of state, never to return. Oregon can substantially reverse this longstanding inequity by consciously gearing up for transtech in these sectors. Revenue from DARPA, the Defense and Homeland Security Depts., and the intelligence agencies’ “black budget” would far surpass the most optimistic estimates for private capital funding. When America, China and India achieve parity in space-based weapons platforms, highly enhanced military and intelligence human assets will become more important than ever before.

Is Oregon going to lose out on the greatest commercial and technological opportunity in history to another political jurisdiction or does it have the marketing vision and will to be the first?

Background Long-Term

Once these top tier researchers and managers have been attracted to Oregon, they will be most concerned that their children will enjoy the finest educational opportunities in addition to maintaining the livability the state has such a reputation for.

Oregon does not currently have the right educational model in place, particularly in the K-12 sector, to produce and retain a concentration of world-class intellect on its own.

Two basic learning models, using Bloom’s taxonomy (familiar to educators), are the cognitive model and the affective model. The cognitive model is knowledge-based education, stressing competition and individual accomplishment and focusing on, “What do you think?” “The cognitive domain involves knowledge and the development of intellectual skills. This includes the recall or recognition of specific facts, procedural patterns, and concepts that serve in the development of intellectual abilities and skills. (Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis, Evaluation).” The affective model is emotive-based education, stressing cooperation and group accomplishment and focusing on, “How do you feel?” “This domain includes the manner in which we deal with things emotionally, such as feelings, values, appreciation, enthusiasms, motivations, and attitudes. (Receiving phenomena, Responding to phenomena, Valuing, Organization, Internalizing values).”

Beginning in the 1970’s, a shift from the cognitive model to the affective model in education occurred. This shift was completed in Oregon within the last approximately seven years, in my experience. The difficulty with this change is that China and India still utilize the knowledge-based cognitive model. Knowledge-based industries will flow towards knowledge-based educational systems and away from emotive-based systems.

The main problem with Oregon’s educational system is not class sizes and the length of the school year, it is that the affective model does not grow the tax base to keep pace with funding needs. The choice between the cognitive model and the affective model is stark: would we rather be asking someone, “What do you think is the best design for a cellular repair nanobot,” or “How do you feel about losing your job?”

Another difficulty in building a homegrown base of top tier researchers and inventors is that the number of annual graduates in science and engineering has been declining nationwide over the last twenty years. The primary reason for this is because our men are not going to college in the numbers they used to. Despite every conceivable incentive for women to go into science and engineering, their numbers have not made up for the loss of men.

This difficulty is particularly troubling for two reasons. First, just as record numbers of the science and engineering workforce are retiring, the need for new scientists and engineers is growing while numbers of homegrown graduates are declining. It is possible that foreign students will fill in many of these positions, but opportunities are increasing in their own countries, making this possibility uncertain. Secondly, half of the nation’s recent engineering doctorates went to foreign students. If they should decide to stay home to obtain their doctorates, much of the advanced research in universities will go with them.

Recently published GRE (Graduate Record Examinations) test score data from the 2001-2002 testing year revealed that only 66% of students preparing for post-graduate education were American students. Of these, only 35% were men. Of the foreign students, 60% were men. Of students intending to pursue an education in the physical sciences, 64% were men with an average quantitative score of 715; the women’s average score was 678. Of students intending to pursue an education in engineering, 78% were men with an average score of 727; the women’s average score was 716. These were the two top average scores out of all majors. Conversely, of students intending to pursue an education in education, 78% were women with an average score of 471; the men’s average score was 508. This was the lowest average score out of all majors.

Applying the test standard deviation to the mean scores in engineering and the physical sciences show that men dominate the critical highest end of scores; those most likely to develop into the top tier individuals required for maximizing technological innovation.

This summer, Cambridge University professor of psychology and psychiatry Simon Baron-Cohen published The Essential Difference: The Truth about the Male and Female Brain. The central thesis of the book is that: “The female brain is predominantly hard-wired for empathy. The male brain is predominantly hard-wired for understanding and building systems.” The author makes it clear that this biological hard-wiring is not solely related to gender, just predominantly. The empathizing brain is matched to the emotive-based affective model of education and the systematizing brain is matched to the knowledge-based cognitive model of education.

It is not particularly surprising that the affective model, fitted so nicely to the empathizing brain, dominates our educational system since women going into education outnumber men by 4 to 1. It is not particularly surprising that men are not following traditional paths into math, engineering and science since the cognitive model, fitted so nicely to the systematizing brain, is largely unavailable in the educational system. Primarily women with the lowest quantitative scores are educating primarily men with the highest scores going into the physical sciences and engineering.

One of the main reasons why the proportion of American men taking the GRE test has dropped to 35% is because they are not obtaining undergraduate degrees, indeed they are not obtaining regular high school diplomas in the numbers they used to.

The Business Roundtable prepared a report in February 2003 entitled The Hidden Crisis in the High School Dropout Problems of Young Adults in the U.S. that concentrated on gender differences in dropout rates. The report concluded that: “Our best estimates indicate that somewhere between 25 and 30 percent of America’s teenagers, including recent immigrants, fail to graduate from high school with a regular high school diploma,” and that, “The high incidence of dropout problems among young men [estimated at an average ratio of 135 men per 100 women] is a major factor contributing to below average rates of college attendance and degree attainment among them.”

To summarize the problem, women have adjusted the educational system primarily to fit their needs and men are leaving the system because it does not fit their needs. This has not occurred to our Asian business competitors, giving them a profound advantage in the development of a knowledge-based economy.

What We Are Trying To Accomplish Long-Term

I am proposing that if you want to maximize innovation, you must keep men in school and offer the educational system primarily geared to the systematizing brain.

The OCKED made recommendations to the state legislature involving “raising Oregon’s commitment to excellence in educating and training its knowledge-based workforce, expanding capacity to meet the growing demand for well-educated knowledge-based workers.” The Oregon Business Plan aims at “building a world-class K-12 education system,” and “ramping up graduates and capacity in engineering education.”

To develop a knowledge-based workforce, a knowledge-based education is historically the most successful for producing sophisticated scientists, engineers and inventive entrepreneurs.

The combined population of China and India outnumbers Oregon’s population by 670 to 1. To reverse the flow of knowledge-based industries to Asia requires that Oregon’s students develop the capacity to compete against those odds. To compete in the arena of knowledge-based industry, we must have a greater sector of knowledge-based education (the cognitive model) and a smaller sector of emotive-based education (the affective model). This proposal will satisfy the requirements of the fourth P, People - Workforce and Education.

It is imprudent, if not delusional, to presume that men are historically the primary inventors and leaders of technological development due to social factors alone. It is generally unproductive to argue with success on the scale of the historical record. This recognition in no way diminishes the historical record of women’s achievements in this area or makes assumptions as to the importance of their future contributions. It is vital to allow everyone the opportunity to contribute to the best of their abilities in developing transtech.

The Hart-Rudman Commission on National Security to 2025 concluded that the nation’s failure to reform math and science education is the second biggest threat to our national security. Given this conclusion, the acute under-representation of men in higher education should be thought of as a Homeland Security Code Red. If the dominance of the affective model is nearly the greatest threat to national security, we should ease off continued indulgence in this ‘experiment against reality.’

Specific Recommendations Long-Term

Currently, Oregon has only one educational sector, which still has access to the cognitive model, the internet-linked home-schooling sector. This is the sector that is producing brilliant and original students who are at the top of our SAT’s and our Talented Youth programs and who are winning our Spelling and Geography Bees out of all proportion to the size of their sector.

We cannot count on the internet-linked home-schooling sector to have the capacity to grow to the size we need to produce sufficient “intellectual horsepower” (to use the PDC’s phrase) to drive the transtech industry to the top tier, because: a) parental expertise and interest in science and math is spotty and b) there has been downward pressure on wages due to a shift to offshore businesses and heavy immigration, necessitating too many parents to be working outside the home. Therefore, we need to begin developing seed schools following the cognitive model, using the internet-linking techniques prevalent in the home-school sector to reach the whole state. An example of seed schools would be polytechnic charter schools in at least Portland, Salem and Eugene. The OHSU/OGI merger provides a blueprint for OHSU to expand in the other direction, towards a quasi-private polytechnic school for 7-12 grades. This would establish a knowledge-based educational pipeline from seventh grade through post-doctoral studies.

The City of Portland is making commitments to its economic vitality by promoting knowledge-based industry while its young men are not earning the number of advanced degrees in the fields these industries require. Accordingly, the Children’s Fund’s most effective allocations to advance the city’s overall objectives and promotions would be targeted primarily to boys’ development issues.

It would be very helpful if the legislature could begin an affirmative action program with incentives designed to increase the ratio of men to women administrators and across the board in 5-12 classroom teachers to 50-50. In particular, methods should be devised to upgrade 5-12 science and math teacher capabilities.

Conclusion

The combined strategy is to attract world-class intellect through the creation of a transtech atmosphere with cultural legitimacy, while an educational shift back towards the cognitive model develops sufficient homegrown intellect, able to compete with China and India. Simply meeting Certificate of Initial Mastery (CIM) standards in aggregate is not sufficient to produce a “large cadre of world-class scientists.” Promoting a transtech environment and re-orienting our schools would put Oregon into the national, indeed the international spotlight, generating interest on the part of the best and the brightest of the upcoming researchers. This combination provides a very dynamic and pioneering marketing opportunity.

We should try to be the best and not settle for less. This requires that we increase the diversity in our school system by expanding the size of the knowledge-based sector. The cognitive model will provide the brainpower to replace businesses lost to other countries. Without this commitment at the primary and secondary educational level, promotion of Oregon’s knowledge-based sustained business renaissance lacks foundational stability.

E-Mail: reillyjones@comcast.net

Home Page