“Rick’s been rescued from cornfields and cow pastures” is how an email exchange presented the idea that hard-to-find cleanroom space was available for lease from our Port Authority in central Licking County.
The author meant well. The email recipient wouldn’t have believed it, perhaps, without the rural reference. The author, frankly, didn’t believe it either.
Thirty five miles from Ohio’s largest city sits the largest concentration of cleanroom space in the state. It may defy some folk’s conventional wisdom, but it’s been true for going on 65 years.
That email recipient converted use of the cleanroom space into a technology startup.
Today, in that same cleanroom space, a life sciences company is aiming to commercialize taking brain tissue generated from an individual’s skin cells into a predictor of future ailments. Even more, the predictions can be coupled with early cures. It’s personalized, predictive medicine.
Yes, that’s happening in a
lab in Heath, population 10,000.
Innovation knows no population density.
First Thought: Urban
vs. Rural Isn’t New.
This urban versus rural thing is not a new notion. David McCullough’s book The Wright Brothers evidences the idea that innovation and technological capabilities can come from unlikely places. New York media ignored Orville and Wilbur’s achievements out of disbelief that bicycle mechanics from a small town in Ohio could achieve the world’s first powered flight.
Yet, the $1 trillion annual aerospace and aviation industry in the U.S. was born in Dayton, Ohio.
The brain tissue researcher in our Port Authority’s cleanroom in Heath often tells the Wright brothers’ story when he speaks to fellow innovators in Boston or Dubai. After all, he does have to explain the surprising place from where his research originates.
Another Thought: Don’t
Discount Rural Areas.
It’s an easy trap to discount the potential for innovation based on how few people live in a place.
I’ve been to Bi-Con in Derwent, Ohio and contend the highest concentration of innovation per capita is there. At night, Derwent is home to a population of less than 100. During the day, Derwent swells in working population thanks to the company which makes control panels and automation for the natural gas industry. Major, life-safety problem solving is owed to this place.
The Derwent tale is a
lesson for suburban dwellers too.
Third Thought: Celebrate
Innovation Wherever It Began.
Ohio is so frequently discounted as “fly over country” or “Rust Belt.” Those pejoratives are owed to the population density myth too. Yet, Ohio has many reasons to celebrate innovation.
Fiberglass, invented in Newark, Ohio, is in everything today from car bodies to data lines. Kent, Ohio is the origin of liquid crystal displays, the guts to screens for our phones and computers.
The U.S. Capitol holds a statue of Thomas Edison. He’s the face of innovation and Ohio, rightly, celebrates his many achievements. He was born in Milan, Ohio.
It’s a fallacy to conceive that one location can possess superiority, economically, based solely on population density. The best measure of innovation comes from what a place produces, not how many people it packs in.
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This column is a regular column in The Columbus Dispatch.
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