From Staff Reports

 The Fourth Annual AdvantageWest Economic Summit on Nov. 19 featured a panel discussion in which all four participants favored innovation and expressed the sentiment that Western North Carolina has an unusually large number of creative people who need to be encouraged to innovate.

Perhaps ironically for a forum focusing on innovation, the summit’s panel members seemed to have no disagreements on any important issues discussed.

Despite moderator D.G. Martin’s best efforts to draw out any differences, no contrarians were to be found in what was intended as an out-of-the-box discussion on creativity.

The panelists included Mike Adams, president of Moog Music based in Asheville; Anita Brown-Graham, director of the N.C. Institute for Emerging Issues; Mark Erwin, a former U.S. ambassador and head of a Charlotte investment firm; and Dan Gerlach, head of the Golden LEAF Foundation.

“This might be the best-attended summit we’ve had yet,” AdvantageWest Chairman Tom Alexander told the crowd in opening the program, noting that “somewhat north of 325 people registered.” (The Daily Planet counted about 400 people present.)

Prior to the panel discussion, a number of the attendees neworked over a buffet of appetizers and locally produced beers in Pack Place.

Among the panel discussion’s highlights, Erwin entertained the crowd with his predictions of several transitions that he said already are underway.

He predicted that the post office, paper checks and the printed newspaper — and printed books — are likely to disappear in the next few years.

As the program wound down, Erwin got a positive response when he asked the crowd if it would like to hear some more of his predictions.

With Martin’s acquiesence, Erwin predicted the demise of the residential telephone land line, music delivery “as we know it” and television “as we know it.” 

In general, he said that “the things you own are going to decline,” thanks to the ability to download — or store — so much from computers, smartphones and other high-tech devices.

On a more threatening note, Erwin said, “Your privacy — it’s gone ... There are TV cameras everywhere ... The GPS knows where you are” because of  cellphones.

In response to Erwin’s predictions, Martin triggered much laughter from the audience when he quipped, “As someone involved in writing a newspaper column and reviews books on TV,” it looks like everything in which he is involved will be disappearing, so Martin might just have to think “about doing something else.”

Earlier, following his initial predictions, Erwin asked if WNC innovators can dream up products and services to replace those that will disappear.

There is a need for rural broadband, or fast Internet access, to keep rural areas competitive with larger cities, Gerlach said.

“We want to be a state, not just a successful corridor between Raleigh and Charlotte, but across the whole state,” he noted, adding that it is a mistake to confuse innovation with technology.

“The region has a biodiversity unmatched in the rest of the world. There’s money to be made there, if you can show farmers ways to make money. Farmers are some of the most innovative people. They have already had great success with the local foods movement,” Gerlach said.

The panel discussion began with Martin asking, “What does innovation mean?”

Adams said it can be “a very personal thing” and that “it’s not necessarily product-connected.”

However, he asserted that “both the semiconductor and the iPhone are great examples of innovations.”

With a sheepish look, Martin asked, “What about those of us outside the loop?”

“If you don’t participate (in adopting high-tech devices), you’re not being innovative,” Adams told Martin.

In responding to Martin’s question, Brown-Graham told of a Chapel Hill teacher who had two choices for her class — to have it sit inside for lessons or she could send it outside for recess. Instead, the teacher chose a third way, leading her class on a walk around the campus, as the teacher taught her lessons in motion, Brown -Graham said, admiringly.

As illustrated by the example of the teacher, she asserted, “Innovation, more often than not, is born out of an identifiable need — and then they (the innovators) respond to the need ... Innovation is thinking about what’s next. Real innovation is born out of a perceived need.”

Erwin said the Latin definition of innovation includes the words “into” and “new.”

He added, “Probably the best example of innovation was in Mauritius,” an island to the east of Madagascar off the east coast of Africa, which sought — and received — its independence from Great Britain. At that point, Mauritius, Erwin said, was one of the poorest nations in the world.

It is a volcanic island with 1.3 million people — “and they had one product, sugar ... They said, ‘The only natural resource we have is our people,” so a concentrated effort was made to offer education to everyone.

“They said, ‘We don’t know how we’re going to pay for it (universal education), but ...’ Today, Mauritius is the most prosperous country in Africa. It’s a democracy and free-enterprise center — and it has a higher literacy rate than the United States.”

In briefly recounting what the people of Mauritius accomplished, Erwin said, “They looked at the needs of the world and tried (successfully) to fill them.”

Martin, the moderator, asked, “How can you apply this to Western North Carolina?”

In a roundabout response to Martin’s question, Erwin said, “Warsaw, Indiana — a town of 14,000 people. It’s called the ‘orthopedic capital of the world.’”

As some in the crowd chuckled, Erwin noted that “if you have any (artificial) body parts,” they likely were made in Warsaw.

“That whole economy is built on an industry of orthopedic devices” — and Erwim said WNC could follow the same model by specializing —and excelling — in a specific high-demand sector and achieving prosperity.

The last panelist to address the question of defining innovation was Gerlach, who said, “Innovation is doing something new in a way that makes life a little better.

When Martin asked if any panelist had any further comments after hearing the others discuss innovation, Adams said, “There has to be a market for it ... I think education plays a big part of that ... We put on a festival recently, called Moogfest” that he said was a tremendous success in attractive innovative musicians and that he was thinking about expanding it to include venture capitalists and other entrepreneurial types.

“The education system is a big part of that, but you also have to have the financial resources to make it happen,” Adams said.