Mississippi's New Mission: Developing High-Tech Clusters (cover) Bill's Objective: Seed Clusters Study Outlines Need for Change Blake: Time to Use Secret Weapon Wealth: From Tupelo to Vicksburg Musgrove: No More 'Patchwork' Efforts Request Information |
JACKSON, Miss. -- From the Delta region in the south to places like Corinth and Iuka in the north, a radical shift is taking place in Mississippi. It may not be readily apparent as you drive by the cotton fields and the magnolia-lined lanes of this state of 2.7 million people, but it's happening nonetheless. Mississippi is transforming itself from a sleepy, rural economy based on agriculture and old world industrial factories into a high-technology hotbed that is rapidly becoming a national leader in the fields of wireless communications, super-computing, space research and polymer science. Does that sound unlikely? Check the facts and do the math:
The question for Mississippi's business and government leaders, according to venture capitalist Troy Stovall, is: "How do we use our inherent advantage in the telecommunications industry and high-tech infrastructure to benefit economic development?" Stovall, president of GulfSouth Capital, says that for Mississippi to capital ize on its existing base of assets in these high-growth fields, the existing industries must "act more like a cluster" and the government must do more to foster such cluster development. And that's exactly what the private sector and public sector in Mississippi plan to do. Thanks to a wide-sweeping economic development package passed by the Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Ronnie Musgrove on Sept. 1, 2000, Mississippi has entered a new era of industry development and recruitment. "What we passed was nothing less than a change in direction and a complete restructuring in our economic development strategy," says Gov. Musgrove. "In order for Mississippi to be competitive, we have to recognize that we are in a New Economy. We needed a comprehensive, fact-based approach to economic development." Musgrove notes that the state's old "patchwork approach with no strategy of targeting our resources and our people with business and industry needs" wasn't getting the job done -- and something had to change. "The New Economy," he says, "is seamless, borderless and global. In a borderless economy, Mississippi must take a regional approach to economic development." After convening strategy meetings with business and government leaders around the state for more than a year, the governor presented his groundbreaking economic development package -- called the Advantage Mississippi Initiative -- to the Mississippi Legislature for a special session in August. The bill -- the result of efforts by the Governor's Office, State Legislature, Mississippi Development Authority and Mississippi Economic Council -- lays out a broad range of financial incentives and new alliances designed to make the state's economy more competitive in the Information Age.
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