Entrepreneurship and the Attraction of Creative Talent Must Be New Brunswick's Obsession

Following is my contribution to New Brunswick's Self-Sufficiency Task Force. It was posted in the comments of this page from the Task Force web site on expanding our corporate base and is in response to the statement made at the top of the page by Task Force Co-chair Francis McGuire.

If you have not posted your comments to the Task Force web site, I encourage you to do so.

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Mr. McGuire,

Your thesis holds water if jobs were something this province needed. Fortunately, the sectors that hold the most promise for our economic growth, such as ICT, clean energy, and specialty trades, have more jobs than people to fill them. As a result, the greatest challenge we have here is the attraction and retention of talent. More than anything we need to grow our creative human capital.

There is a litany of research and demographic measurements pointing to a dramatic shift in our western societies that says that building communities and regions that are attractive to those with innovative, creative minds and the tools and policies needed to commercialize the ideas they produce is the only way to grow any economy in the 21st century. The more this province talks about traditional sectors such as manufacturing, natural resources, and branch plant operations without an obsession for the innovative components that these and every industry should be fostering, the more we will promote the New Brunswick brand as yesterday's economy and a great place to retire.

I sincerely hope your suggestion that we need jobs in this province is not with the intention of propping up rural areas with the limited resources our province currently has. This would be very unwise and completely unsustainable. Pulling the assets of the three southern cities together as New Brunswick's urban economic locale is logical for a variety of reasons including the pooling of creative talent, sharing access to the many resources we have collectively, and ending the asinine cultural divisions that the most small-minded among us continue to foster.

Contrary to your statement that "we need to attract large corporations to the province", the ICT sector in the Ottawa region, which is considered one of the most dynamic and prosperous on the continent, has over 1500 businesses with over 95% of them employing less than 5 people each. If this is not a strong argument for the need to make entrepreneurship and new indigenous business development paramount in our strategy to grow the province, I don't know what is.

In your statement you mention Ireland, but I am afraid you have not recognized the essence of what Ireland has focused on and accomplished, and in whose footsteps I believe we need to follow. Ireland put all of its energy into the attraction and retention of creative human capital. In addition to Ireland's "industrialization by invitation" that brought only the leading high-tech companies through tax incentives and aggressive recruiting, Ireland's success revolves around the talent pool produced by Ireland's excellent universities. So obsessed has Ireland been with fostering a culture of creativity that they even offered hefty tax breaks to culturally creative people such as artists and musicians. And the second main pillar of the Irish success story resulted from the formation of Enterprise Ireland and its mandate to support entrepreneurship, venture capital, and various efforts to stimulate indigenous high-tech industry.

Attracting businesses from outside our region to set up shop in New Brunswick must continue but with a very clear strategy for the types of businesses we want and substantial incentives for them to invest in our creative human capital and lay real roots here. The "branch plant" strategy New Brunswick is familiar with is one from a bygone era and, if it worked, we would have a sustainable economy today, would we not? If the plan is to regard entrepreneurship and indigenous business growth as a nice-to-have, as you have indicated on your web site, and to continue pretending that many of our traditional industries and business attitudes do not present a culture and ethos that will repel the creative talent this province needs, I am afraid our province will be ready just in time for 1985.

New Brunswick has all of the ingredients necessary to be an attractive place for the talent we need. Our society is conservative but tolerant, traditional but technologically advanced, and we are rich with authentic culture, architecture, recreation, and nature that is attractive to so many people in the talent pool we need. In addition, we have a history of entrepreneurship, of taking care of ourselves, and in connecting to the world in meaningful ways.

Sincerely,

Jeff Roach

Trip to Disney!

We just got back from our visit to Disney World in Florida and had a fantastic time! The kids are at the perfect age for this trip and it was magical for all of us. The Roaches and Nanny Bobbie did Disney for 4 days and then we joined Grampy in Indian Rocks for a few days of relaxation by the beach and the malls.

Here are pics from our trip: http://picasaweb.google.com/jeroach/0702DisneyPics

You can view the pics as a slideshow here: http://picasaweb.google.com/jeroach/0702DisneyPics/photo#s5031903730788241362