About a dozen years ago, I was transitioning from business to economic development and evaluating regional opportunities. I distinctly remember the moment when a prominent civic leader pulled me aside and cautioned me that, while our region had some latent potential in biosciences, we were too late to the game and the sector would never amount to much for us. Nonetheless, key Northeast Ohio leaders and their institutions dreamed big.
Fast forward a decade — through innovations by our scientists, leadership from our research institutions, prudent risk-taking by our entrepreneurs, enlightened interventions from the public sector, unwavering support from philanthropy and a big assist from favorable market conditions — our region has emerged as a global leader in many sectors of this industry. Biosciences is now a Northeast Ohio growth engine. In the last three years alone, young companies have created more than 1,000 jobs at an average wage of more than $60,000. Capital to this industry has exceeded $200 million annually for the last five years, up by a factor of eight from a decade ago.
Not bad for a bunch of latecomers.
A recent assessment conducted by Team NEO, MAGNET, Youngstown Business Incubator and America Makes, with financial support from the Fund for Our Economic Future, suggests that it may be time to think big again — this time, in the area of additive manufacturing.
Over the next decade, our region is positioned to become a national, if not global, leader in this rapidly evolving market. Growth is by 25 percent a year. The authors of this report challenge us to think about a 10 percent market share goal, which is aggressive, but not out of the question. Achieving that goal could result in as many as 65,000 good, family-sustaining jobs by 2030 and a revitalized manufacturing sector.
Of course, like the biosciences, big visions will not materialize on their own. Indeed, leaders in other economies — from South Carolina to Singapore — are hungrily eyeing the growing additive manufacturing markets. But if we move soon and decisively, Northeast Ohio has the elements to win.
So why all the optimism? One of the big reasons is the presence of America Makes, the national accelerator for additive manufacturing and 3-D printing. Northeast Ohio competed hard to win this center in 2012. Located in downtown Youngstown and comprised of a broad set of super-regional partners (Case Western Reserve University, Lorain County Community College, Youngstown State University, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Pittsburgh, Penn State and University of Michigan) with connections to scores of companies around the globe, America Makes is driving research on next-generation technologies.
Add to that a strong regional manufacturing base that can benefit from and propel the adoption of additive manufacturing. The authors suggest that as many as 1,900 regional metal fabricators and 800 plastics producers could be affected. These companies employ roughly 100,000 people, or about 5 percent of our total workforce.
To date, however, little of the America Makes and additive manufacturing innovations are reaching Northeast Ohio companies. The authors call for a major push to increase exposure to and adoption of technologies that can lead to increased competitiveness in our manufacturing sector.
But the additive manufacturing opportunity isn’t just about helping our existing manufacturers survive. It is also about achieving growth. I was particularly intrigued by the roadmap’s observation that even though Northeast Ohio has a great deal of production, much of the associated design and engineering has occurred at far-away corporate offices. However, additive manufacturing calls for such design to be closer to production, which suggests that scores of terrific new design and engineering jobs could be created on the shop floors of our communities.
Another tangible and more immediate opportunity (about $1 billion to be precise) identified by the roadmap is in the tooling industry. If there is something we know in Northeast Ohio, it is tooling. It doesn’t take much to imagine success in this arena.
Longer term, but perhaps even more exciting, is the potential to leverage our regional strength in materials technology to develop next-generation production inputs. While many of the additive manufacturing materials in use today are captive to out-of-market equipment producers, the authors suggest this could change dramatically as patents expire and innovation proceeds.
The calls to action spelled out in the roadmap are several. They ultimately hinge around promoting adoption among local manufacturers, preparing a workforce for a digital manufacturing world and better connecting our innovation and commercialization resources. We must link stakeholders from southwest Pennsylvania to southeast Michigan. The biggest obstacles are inertia and skepticism, which imply that a significant outreach and demonstration effort will be needed.
A tall order? You bet. But we’ve done this before, and can again. Our region has become pretty good at building networks of interested parties. And we have a multitude of important entities with a stake in the additive manufacturing arena, including our research institutions, companies both large and small, public sector officials and economic-development institutions. Many came together to win the America Makes accelerator, so there are already some promising relationships in place. And the wind seems to be in our sails: In May, America Makes, the Youngstown Business Incubator, Youngstown State University and MAGNET leveraged the work of the roadmap to win a $500,000 state grant for an Advanced Tooling Acceleration Program.
But that should just be the beginning. The time is upon us to think big and seize an opportunity that could be as big as — or bigger than — the biosciences revolution over the decade ahead.