Fort Collins-Loveland runs on brainpower

08/05/2005

Source: Northern Colorado Business Report

Author: Robert Baun

Economic success is a game of survival of the smartest.

And the Fort Collins-Loveland area is poised to come out on top.

So says Expansion Management

magazine.

In its 2005 Knowledge Worker Quotient, the economic development magazine ranked Fort Collins-Loveland among its "Five-Star Knowledge Worker" metro areas. The list, which identifies 73 "Five-Star" metros, of was part of a report titled "America's Super Cities Of The Future" in the magazine's May edition.

Other Colorado metros on the list include Boulder, Colorado Springs and Denver-Aurora.

In the same report, which surveyed 362 metro areas, Fort Collins-Loveland ranked No. 12 nationally for the "Best Educated Technical Work Force" and No. 10 for "Scientists and Engineers Per Capita." Boulder ranked No. 2 for "Best Educated Technical Work Force" and No. 4 on the "Scientists and Engineers" list.

According to Expansion Management's editors, the significance of the knowledge-worker ranking is rooted in the global economy.

American communities should not position themselves as low-cost options for industry because "they can't possibly complete with low-wage countries like China, India or even Mexico, each of which has well-educated workers wiling to work for a fraction of what U.S. workers will," the magazine said.

"The good paying jobs, those that offer a bright future, will be found in the knowledge economy, a constantly evolving sector that relies almost entirely on innovation and entrepreneurship."

Expansion Management evaluated the knowledge levels of metro areas based on four broad statistical categories: adult education levels among college graduates, medical doctors, colleges and universities and research and development spending among universities.

Predictably, college towns and communities with large government research facilities, such as Huntsville, Ala., and Palm Bay-Melbourne-Titusville, Fla. - both with major NASA operations - ranked high for "Scientists and Engineers Per Capita."

The evaluation criteria seemed tailor-made for Fort Collins-Loveland, which includes Colorado State University, several major U.S. Department of Agriculture research facilities, and a growing a presence by the Centers for Disease Control. The area's medical sector has also expanded in recent years.

The "Knowledge Worker" theory has also proven accurate on a number of occasions in recent years. For instance, InSitu Inc., a maker of water quality analysis instruments, relocated to Fort Collins last year from Laramie, Wyo., primarily to be closer to the technical labor pool in Northern Colorado. Heska Corp., now in Loveland, initially moved to Fort Collins from California due to the expertise of veterinary scientists at Colorado State University.

Local economic development specialists embraced the Expansion Management report.

"This article is catching the eyes of many executives making expansion and relocation decisions," said Jacob Castillo, director of business retention and expansion for the Northern Colorado Economic Development Corp.

The Northern Colorado EDC has included the ranking in its marketing materials.

"This substantiates that we do indeed have the work force capable of supporting the knowledge economy of the future," Castillo said.

Hunt Lambert, director of Colorado State University's Center for Entrepreneurship, said the "Five-Star" ranking also underlines the gap between the capabilities of the local work force and the actual industry activity.

"There is not enough industry in this state to take advantage of the technologies we are producing," Lambert said. "Part of what we want to do (at CSU) is get much more purposeful about" closing that gap.

The latter comment referred to CSU's recent emphasis on economic development as a university mission. The school recently announced it plans to hire an associate vice president for economic development to further that cause.