Technology and Innovation-Led Development
Turning Knowledge into Jobs and Companies
Ideas do not become payrolls on their own. Between a promising piece of knowledge, whether a line of code, a laboratory result, or a cleaner way to run a production line, and a company that signs paychecks, there lies a long and uncertain passage. Innovation-led development is the work of shortening it. A recent review of the international research, published in the fifth volume of the Centre for Local Economic Development series, sharpens the point with a warning worth heeding: places that only import and install other people’s technology, rather than creating any of their own, risk what economists call path dependence, a run of small, sensible adoptions that ends in a technological dead end. The lesson for a county like ours is not to stop adopting. It is to make sure that we are also, somewhere, creating. This installment sets out what innovation capacity consists of, names four assets we already hold, identifies one working partnership between education and industry, and weighs honestly the greener direction the field is now taking.
Begin with why any of this is worth the effort. New and young firms, not small firms as a class, account for nearly all net new job creation in the United States, and for almost a fifth of gross job creation, once a firm’s age is considered. The rate at which Americans start businesses has drifted downward for decades, which is precisely why firm formation cannot be left to chance. A development strategy built only on recruiting employers that already exist is half a strategy. The other half is helping new companies form, and helping the ones we have adopt better methods.
What the Research Now Says
The international literature has moved decisively toward a particular kind of innovation. Synthesizing dozens of recent studies, the review reports that green technological innovation increasingly drives regional growth by reshaping industrial structure, lowering energy use, and raising what economists call green total factor productivity, and that whether a region takes up such innovation depends heavily on its business environment, on how closely new technologies relate to what its firms already do, and on access to finance. Two features of that finding matter locally. The first is that the gains tend to spill over, benefiting neighboring firms and communities, and not only the adopter. The second is that much of this rides on the broader wave often called the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the bundle of automation, data, and connected systems that can lift production efficiency and open new business models.
Studies of clean-technology industries in Europe have found meaningful job creation where strategic planning and investment were present, and broader analyses treat green innovation as a plausible driver of employment and economic stability rather than a threat to it. The larger promise behind this work, that innovation can decouple economic growth from resource use and emissions, remains contested, and some of the economists most associated with the question are skeptical that decoupling can go far enough, or fast enough. We take the sensible middle position. Efficiency and cleaner processes are worth pursuing on their own terms, because they lower costs and steady employment, whether or not they resolve the larger climate arithmetic.
Four Innovation Assets in Grant County
This is where a county’s institutions earn their keep. The research is consistent on one point in particular: regions with a greater diversity of knowledge, especially knowledge that is related rather than scattered, produce more new firms, including green ones, and the formation of those firms is shaped less by any lone genius than by knowledge exchange, industry networks, and local connections that draw entrepreneurs in. Concentrating and connecting knowledge institutions, is the mechanism by which companies get made. Grant County holds four such assets.
The first is Ivy Tech Community College, Marion campus, which serves Grant and Blackford counties and offers more than thirty programs. It is the open-door institution, and the one tied most directly to the factory floor. Through its School of Advanced Manufacturing, Engineering, and Applied Science, students learn to program robotics and work with equipment such as hydraulics, and many of the shorter workforce credentials are free to eligible Hoosiers through the state’s Next Level Jobs program.
The second is Taylor University’s Computer Science and Engineering department in Upland, which the university describes as one of the state’s premier computer science programs, reporting graduate placement near 100 percent and coursework that reaches into artificial intelligence and cybersecurity. Its computer engineering degree is accredited by ABET, reports placement of 97 percent before graduation, and sends students to build satellites, virtual-reality systems, and prototypes for space and defense work. Taylor is a source of technical talent, and of applied projects that can seed companies.
The third is Indiana Wesleyan University’s DeVoe School of Business, Technology and Leadership in Marion, which offers a bachelor’s in entrepreneurship taught by faculty who have founded companies, and whose own founding gift came from a onetime Grant County entrepreneur whose career began with a Marion dealership in 1979.
The fourth is less visible, and no less important: the network that helps founders and manufacturers do the practical work of building and improving firms. The Indiana Small Business Development Center offers no-cost, confidential advising from the concept stage through financing. The Purdue Manufacturing Extension Partnership pairs Purdue faculty and graduate students with the engineers of small and mid-sized manufacturers to adopt new technology over a matter of months, at shared cost. Work that Purdue reports has produced billions of dollars in cumulative impact for Indiana manufacturers since 2005. Together they are the county’s incubation and commercialization layer.
One Partnership Between Education and Industry
The clearest illustration of how these pieces connect is the Indiana Next Generation Manufacturing Competitiveness Center, or IN-MaC. Led by Purdue with Ivy Tech Community College and Vincennes University, its Technology Adoption Program works directly with manufacturers on the process and technology improvements they need. This is education and industry in the same room, and it matters because the research keeps returning to the same conclusion: collaborative networks, not lone institutions, are what move innovation into a local economy. A manufacturing county compounds advantage less by recruiting the next plant than by raising the productivity of the plants, and the people, it already has, and IN-MaC is one of the few vehicles that carries university engineering knowledge onto the shop floor. Grant County’s manufacturers are eligible. Part of our job is to make sure they use it.
Our Role
What all of this asks of an economic development organization is modest and specific. We do not invent technologies or found companies. Our contribution is connective and educational: to convene the college, the universities, the employer, the founder, and the lender who would otherwise not find one another; to refer entrepreneurs to no-cost coaching and manufacturers to extension help; and to raise awareness, since the research is emphatic that a well-informed community takes up new methods faster than an uninformed one. Two of the review’s quieter conclusions are worth adopting as house policy. In places with limited resources, steady, incremental improvement tends to outperform the dramatic leap, which argues for the three-month process project over the moonshot. And local engagement, not distant direction, is what makes any of it hold. A county’s economic future is written less in the plants and companies it persuades to move in, than in the companies and capabilities it builds at home. Our task is to make that building, and the knowledge it runs on, a little more deliberate each year.
Resources
“About the Marion Campus.” Ivy Tech Community College, www.ivytech.edu/locations/marion/about-the-marion-campus/.
“Academic Programs Offered.” Ivy Tech Community College, www.ivytech.edu/locations/marion/academic-programs-offered/.
Aldieri, L., et al. “Is Green Innovation an Opportunity or a Threat to Employment? An Empirical Analysis of Three Main Industrialized Areas: The USA, Japan and Europe.” Journal of Cleaner Production, vol. 214, 2019, pp. 758-66.
“B.A. Entrepreneurship.” Indiana Wesleyan University, www.indwes.edu/program/division-of-business/ba-entrepreneurship.
Bai, C., et al. “Industry 4.0 Technologies Assessment: A Sustainability Perspective.” International Journal of Production Economics, vol. 229, 2020, pp. 1-16.
Brandoni, C., et al. “Employment Impact of Renewable Energy Generation on Sustainable Communities.” Proceedings of the Summer School Francesco Turco, vol. 11, no. 13, 2013, pp. 346-51.
“Computer Engineering (BS).” Taylor University, www.taylor.edu/academics/degrees/computer-engineering.
“Computer Science & Engineering Department.” Taylor University, www.taylor.edu/academics/programs/computer-science-engineering.
“$5 Million-Dollar Gift Leads to New IWU School of Business.” The Wesleyan Church, 28 Apr. 2017, www.wesleyan.org/5-million-dollar-gift-leads-to-new-iwu-school-of-business-538.
Hickel, J., and G. Kallis. “Is Green Growth Possible?” New Political Economy, vol. 25, no. 4, 2020, pp. 469-86.
“The Importance of Young Firms for Economic Growth.” Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, 13 Sept. 2015, www.kauffman.org/what-we-do/resources/entrepreneurship-policy-digest/the-importance-of-young-firms-for-economic-growth.
Indiana Small Business Development Center. “About.” Indiana SBDC, isbdc.org/about/.
Kim, K., et al. “Green-Tech Firm Creation in Germany: The Role of Regional Knowledge.” International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, vol. 19, no. 1, 2023, pp. 97-120.
“Manufacturing.” Purdue University, tap.purdue.edu/services/manufacturing.
“Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP).” Purdue University, tap.purdue.edu/mep.
Speckemeier, L., and D. Tsivrikos. “Green Entrepreneurship: Should Legislators Invest in the Formation of Sustainable Hubs?” Sustainability, vol. 14, no. 12, 2022, p. 7152.
“Technology and Productivity Solutions.” Purdue Manufacturing Extension Partnership, mep.purdue.edu/services/technology-productivity-solutions/.
Venter, Marius, editor. Local Economic Development: Innovation, New Technology and Green Economies. AOSIS, 2025. Centre for Local Economic Development, vol. 5.