becoming a
'brain belt' starts with smart collaboration
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Working together could power Milwaukee’s future economy By Chris Jenkins - Communications Director, MMAC
hen economist Antoine van Agtmael began studying the evolution of industrial cities around the world for the 2016 book he co-authored, “The Smartest Places on Earth,” he took a look at Milwaukee. Spoiler alert: We didn’t quite make the cut the first time around. At the time, our region had several of the ingredients needed to make the transformation from a former rust belt city into what van Agtmael and co-author Fred Bakker are calling a “brain belt” — an emerging hotspot for innovation. Milwaukee’s existing ingredients included a significant presence of large companies who emphasize research and development, several institutions of higher education and a livable city filled with cultural attractions and character. Since then, Milwaukee has made incremental gains in some the things van Agtmael thought were missing at the time they were doing research for the book, including an increased presence of startups and startup incubators, the availability of venture capital and increased university research activity. Add in one big seismic shift – the arrival of Foxconn – and van Agtmael, who coined the term “emerging markets,” is tempted to take another look at Milwaukee. “The idea that it could be one of the next in tech makes sense,” van Agtmael says. But the continued growth and development of all
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Milwaukee Commerce, WINTER 2018
those ingredients alone doesn’t guarantee Milwaukee’s future success as a destination for innovation. The main takeaway from van Agtmael’s book is that it’s not enough to simply have legacy companies, startups and universities. For a city or region to fully transform, these entities must connect and work together. “Brain belts” form around smart collaboration. “I would love to come to Milwaukee, because it sounds like it has a lot of the elements,” van Agtmael says, in an interview. A similar thought has occurred to Joe Scanlin, the founder of startup smart-floor designer Scanalytics (see story, p. 20). Scanlin believes both startups and big legacy companies would benefit greatly if they collaborated more than they did back when he was starting his company in 2012. “When we were going through (the startup process), there was less involvement from local larger companies,” Scanlin says. “I think that’s better today. But I think that could still be improved. At the end of the day, a lot of the experiments that some of these companies are going through is likely far more expensive than if they did that experiment with a startup.”
Antoine van Agtmael
