As a result, fully one-third of the nationвЂ™s innovation jobs now reside in just 16 counties, and more than half are concentrated in 41 counties.

In contrast, the bottom 90% of metro areas (343 of them) lost share. As such, they have increased their share of the nationвЂ™s total innovation employment from 17.6% to 22.8%. Most notably, just five top innovation metro areas- Boston, San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle, and San Diego-accounted for more than 90% of the nationвЂ™s innovation-sector growth during the years 2005 to 2017. However, the sector has instead been concentrating in a short list of superstar metropolitan areas. prosperity, and its diffusion into new places would greatly benefit the nationвЂ™s well-being. The innovation sector-composed of 13 of the nationвЂ™s highest-tech, highest R&D вЂњadvanced industries-contributes inordinately to regional and U.S. Regional divergence has reached extreme levels in the U.S.As such, the report draws a number of conclusions and recommendations in the process of laying out what a federal innovation-based growth centers program might look like, including the following: Findings and recommendationsДЄssuming that nonchalance is no longer tenable, the present report posits that the time has come for the nation to offset the pull-away of the innovation superstars with a concerted intervention to support the emergence of new tech stars in new places. The result is a crisis of regional imbalance. Intense new demands for talent and insights increased the value of вЂњagglomerationвЂќ economies, unleashing self-reinforcing dynamics that increasingly benefited big, coastal regions, often to the detriment of cities and metro areas in other parts of the nation.ДЄmid these conditions, convergence gave way to вЂњdivergence.вЂќ A top tier of tech- and innovation-heavy metro areas such as Boston, San Francisco-San Jose, and Seattle began to consistently outperform less-tech-based places on measures of innovation-driven prosperity. However, that trend began to break down in the 1980s, as digital technologies and innovation moved to the center of economic activity. And indeed, for much of the 20 th century, market forces had tended toward вЂњconvergenceвЂќ among communities-reducing wage, investment, and business formation disparities between more- and less-developed regions. That has been a shock for mainstream economists and policymakers who have long trusted the self-regulating nature of the regional economics market. Rather than growing together, the nationвЂ™s regions, metropolitan areas, and towns have been growing apart.

Such an initiative would not only bring significant economic opportunity to more parts of the nation, but also boost U.S. Along these lines, we envision Congress establishing a rigorous competitive process by which the most promising eight to 10 potential growth centers would receive substantial financial and regulatory support for 10 years to become self-sustaining new innovation centers.

To that end, the present paper proposes that Congress assemble and award to a select set of metropolitan areas a major package of federal innovation inputs and supports that would accelerate their innovation-sector scale-up. Specifically, the nation needs-as one initiative among others-a massive federal effort to transform a short list of вЂњheartlandвЂќ metro areas into self-sustaining вЂњgrowth centersвЂќ that will benefit entire regions. Which is why the nation requires a major push to counter these dynamics. Instead, these deeply seated dynamics appear ready to exacerbate the current divides. Neither market forces nor bottom-up economic development efforts have closed this gap, nor are they likely to. The future of AmericaвЂ™s economy lies in its high-tech innovation sector, but it is now clear that same sector is widening the nationвЂ™s regional divides-a fact that became starkly apparent with the 2016 presidential election.Д«ased on вЂњwinner-take-mostвЂќ network economies, the innovation sector has generated significant technology gains and wealth but has also helped spawn a growing gap between the nationвЂ™s dynamic вЂњsuperstarвЂќ metropolitan areas and most everywhere else.

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