Human psychology primes us to see marquee projects like Amazon’s HQ2 as the pinnacle of economic development. Big-name corporate partners capture people’s imagination, with promises of new jobs and state-of-the-art campuses that will revitalize long-stagnant neighborhoods, practically overnight. However, perspective can be easily lost in all this excitement. For every region like the Washington D.C. metro area that secures an HQ2-like award, there are hundreds of other places that thrive off lower-profile, but no less important, economic anchors.
Universities, for example, are the largest job creators in 66 of the 100 largest U.S. cities. Part of the reason that these figures do not regularly make headlines is that they have been regarded as gospel for generations of economic developers.
Read how, through the thought leadership of University of South Carolina’s (UofSC) former president, Dr. Harris Pastides, USC proactively confronted this challenge. Click for full article from Route Fifty.