Senior fellow here and its my privilege to kick off the event. I say our event and today is that for self reasons. For one thing itses t to welcome and launch a book into the world. Given that its a red letter day for antoine and fred complengt new book is just out, and if i do say so we shall rush to pick up a copy. I think we have some beyond the back so on the way out please do that. Todays is two experienced economic observers focusing not on the standard inside the beltway u stuff. Not on the usual spin cycles, but on some of us think that it is the most fundamental ailment of National Well being. R d and stem worker intensive advance ranging through reare nubble energy. Customer clusters and technology equal systems, critical and thats part of their had focus, and then cities. And the collaboration it is that they accelerate. The fact that cities and regions themselves can become incubators of growth. Antoine traveled the world for decades. Now come back to embrace the local, the granular and the micro. I find this a welcomed corrective to the disembodied economic debates that we specialize in here in washington. And none get what is the most aspect of this mornings session which is the fact that antoine and fred have actual good news. Imagine that, good news but i think it is true and this is a thoughtful settled brand of good news,s itses true. At a moment when many commentators have surveyed the global and concluded that america r or at least industrial tear t tier is down and it it is declined. Dlifn by low cost mass production in china. Antoine and fred reinvention being driven by specialized rust belt city, increased focus on high technology. Others have tracked the collapse of mass production, of tires and steal antoine and fred, chronicle at the center of Palmer Research and all of these growing stature in Nano Technology and hopelessness, fretted, and antoine have identified a reinvention playbook in which transitioning regions turned local. Universities into open innovation hubs, and business civic alliances have belt promising new central strategies in regions. They have traveled america in europe and return with an optimistic view that dozens of faded old places are becoming launch pads for the new. I find that extremely excited. Clearly this is a welcome calendar to the scary decline ism that is dominating president ial campaigns for example. In a deep given that antoine is a man while working at the world bank in 1981, coying the turn emerging markets, and in a previous book declared the onset of the emerging century. At that time he wasnt saying it was the beginning of the american century. With a different century, now hes back with a somewhat different view as youll see. So with that i would like to introduce two esteem authored will also participate in a Panel Discussion that will be moderated by my colleague working centennial scholar bruce caps and introduce the panel after antoine speaks. For now let me introduce antoine who will present the book story, and then fred bocker coauthor who will sit on the panel and youll meet him shortly. Antoine, and then a booking trustee and Senior Advisor at the Advisory Firm and principal, founder and ceo and Investment Firm for specializing in emerging markets. I should note that hes also a supporter of both the Metro Program and the office of centennial scholar here at brookings for until recent retirement was a journalist specializing in monetary, Financial Affairs with a prominent outlook dubbed for short the Financial Times of holland. He lives in the wonderful city of amsterdam. But enough lets hear from antoine [applause] thank you im glad they could actually hear this. [laughter] let me start by saying that we could not have written this book without brookings. Brookings not only help us protect the presentation, give us this forum, but for the past couple of years, it was really influential in our thinking. Brookings and im talking here about bruce, amy, mark, really did the task breaking work on all of this. And it has been very good work and we shoot that weve been standing on your shoulders in making all of this possible. So thank you for that very much. Now, when you listen, let me take this thing here. So when you listen to the to some of the political candidates on the left and on the right. Dont you get depressed . I mean, when you listen, it sounds like this country is run out of steam on innovation that our best times are behind us. And that all we have is problems. As mark already said, thats not what we found. Now, let me start by saying if you look in the rearview mirror, yes, things look bleak. Use employment, down. 7 Million People although people dont write about the fact that there are 10 million jobs now in high it can industries, and 4 million jobs were created during this exact 4 million jobs in that period. As good as a you can see that line at the end is starting to reverse. And it was not just competition from my emerging markets. [laughter] it was also information that means that we were doing things much more productively, and, of course, it was the devastating impact of the 2008 crisis that were coming out of. But this bad news we found is not the whole story. And this book really started when i went off to asia and fred an his travels had a similar experience. I went to asia meeting with many and ive been doing this for 30 years. With many entrepreneur, ceos and what do i hear . I hear them complain about american competition. Now i nearly drop out of o my chair. I cant heard that in 30 years. And why were they complaining . Yeah, sure labor costs were going up. Our shell gas was cheap. But the most important thing was they couldnt keep up. With american innovation. And so we ask for this trip, in which we visited a dozen cities all over o Northern Europe and potentially the United States. And theres my daughter. We came to a very different conclusion. The american and by the way, Northern European colonies are not on the decline, no, they are, in fact, regaining competitiveness. Why does a new paradigm for the last 25 years we have been trying to compete on the base of making things as cheap as possible. Losing battle [laughter] certainly against china and emerging markets. We have learned particularly after 2008 crisis that its much better to compete on making things as smart as possible and here were really good. We have great universities. We have this this freedom of thinking that promotes thinking u out of the box that is basis for all real innovation. We have a great legal system, and so smart innovation is beginning to replace cheap labor at the key competitive edge. Now, this is resting on two pillars. The first is, what we call sharing brain power. What is that . This is collaboration among university departments, but also among universities that are climbing out of their ivory towers, and small startups, and all legacy businesses, and youve seen this all over the country. What does it mean . Well, in the past things were done on the very hierarchal business not official. Now we learn it and do it by whipper snappers in Silicon Valley, and cambridge. But not limited to that. We have learned to do things in a college way it is in your own thing but open innovation. Its no longer siloed. No. Todays problems require multidisciplinary solutions. One of the trustees of brookings taught me an important lesson. I went to see Shirley Jackson welcome the president of Polytechnic Institute and she said nothing is being invented it is between academic departments. Importantness, it is no longer talked down but brought them up. Its no longer alone in your garage. No, its done collaborative and finallies its no longer done in isolated Research Centers or government tbus done in vibrant, urban, Innovation Districts thats where young researchers like to work as weve seen. Thats one pillar. Second pillar is we are creating a whole new branch of the economy. We have this old expertise at the base but we have new production metsds, new materials. New discoveries. And on top of that we have u stuff that were really good at, Information Technology, Information Technology and the ability to we didnt have that ability before to u use big data and analyze big data to help this, and all of that is connected through a tiny, tiny little chip, the connector here, and that is the center. Now, that makes various things possible that never were possible before. The future is all about connecting and connectedness. Take the selfdriving car. This will be a resolution in transportation. Whoop my picture here disappeared. The selfdriving car wearkt devices. This will be incredibly important to the future of health care you caa wear them and you can ingest them. The smart grid. Smart farming. Fred can tell you a lot about this, vrgdz at it. All of this is now possible and wases impossible before. This is the smart economy. This is the combination of the physical and the digital economy. Now, you might think okay, this is nice but we have lost all of these industry. Well, think again. We now have new production methods. We have this brought me books for example of m. I. T. Was a second generation, very good at this. Joe from North Carolina who invented a way to make 3d precincting a thousand times fast so you can use not in protype but in production. Dr. Chang of m. I. T. Who found a new way to make batteries. All of this will make it possible to bring back Industries Like socks. Shirts, shoes, i talked to phil, and they said were already making olympic shoes. So this is one thing. The other, really interesting thing we found is that this innovation that we talked about is Collaborative Innovation is no longer limited to places like Silicon Valley and cambridge. It has spread all around the country to be exact more than 30 30 brain belts we call them in the United States to more than 15 brain belts in europe. So let me illustrate that one example. All of you have heard of akron but what you have thought is one of the smart pest places on earth maybe not. Now, what did we find . You had the four old Tire Companies. Gum, practically overnight. It was the loss of a lot of jobs. A lifethreatening challenge and by the way, with all of what we see is always based on the lifethreatening challenge. Then youve got the second element that you find everywhere, a connector in this case is president of the university it be, two got people to t together who got people to collaborate because they have no other choice. And what staying in akron didnt change is the research gibb us like contact lens it is that change color when you have diabetes. Tire it is driving on all kinds of Road Conditions and needed for selfdriving carries. I can give you a hundred inventions like that that they did. They have now a thousand companies that have more people working for them before old Tire Companies thats what i mean by changes, and so you have a lifethreatening situation. University, it is university centric each of these places, brain belts, have universities with world class research. Theyre dealing with the problems of our century. Theyre no longer simple problems. Theyre complex expensive challenges that wire multidisciplinary approaches. Theres an openness forced by reality and necessity to share brain power. They have a connector. And they have an infrastructure that attracts and retains them and by the way that infrastructure includes the Affordable Housing. Thats why people move from lets say Silicon Valley to other places like pittsburgh or akron or whatever. So and finally, of course, you need access to capital. These are the key characterizes. Now we have, albany new york, did you know in albany, new york just outside of the technology complex, and on the leadership years of former christian was a fighter from lebanon by the way who became a great physicist. They are at the forefront of silicon connector research. Next you have founders with thousands of employees working in one of the most modern plants. I was in that room, and that machine there cost a billion dollars. [laughter] its the most modern machine in albany, new york. Not in the park or but in albany, new york. The Research Triangle, is here. Let me tell you story of the sidelines with the old factory. No more secrets there now now its an incubator and port land, oregon, you see gave 500 Million Dollars and that brought together the university of which you have intel that was already there and together they they coo things they couldnt do alone, and now you have basically a university brought back to from the mountain to the city trendway and to make my dutch heart warm, bicycles. So to the world smartest city as it was called you see the old flip, and now you have the Technical University that became really an open innovation platform. Well talk about that later. So 30 places over o 30 places from all over the world twothirds of them former rest belts, and in europe 15 of them as well. And we describe in detail ten of those in our book. Rust belt cities are building on forgotten strength. Now, we couldnt be at brookings without some policy of recommendations otherwise this so lets go through them. Ill just talk about two but there are a whole bunch more. The first is this, we have a 21st century economy. Ive become convinced we are measuring it with 20th century statistics. We have to stop doing this. We are mismeasuring our productivity. No, google map or Google Search is not the statistics. We have to fiend batter way to do this. Second point is terribly important. Why is there are these job mismache and number of people cannot find jobs after they lose in this new world. We have to develop programs of training for jobs that are based i think, on a really good model which is german work study model. It is a great model we could to it. And we can to it. And i think we probably will. We have to reward sharing brain power through et friends that we gi and support an build Innovation District and build support from basic research. They do twothirds of the research in the worlds but we have to keep doing it otherwise we lose outs, and finally since you have leeway not to make profits the next day because they invest in social media, but in a more leeway to invest for the longer term. So in conclusion, as you can see, fred and i are optimistic. We think that university and Northern Europe has a very good future. Innovation is not that, competitiveness is not that. In fact, we are regaining it. Maybe the best way to sum it up, is if you look outside it is no longer winter in america. [laughter] spring is coming back. Thank you. Oh, yeah. Welcome up our colleague. So im bruce cap, from brookings, it is absolute how does that work im just playing around [laughter] absolute pleasure to moderate this panel. It is an absolute pleasure in this season of despair. To be optimistic about the future of our country. And the future of many similar cities in europe. Fred and antoine have done all of us i think a great service. I mean, this is almost like a book, it takes two dutchman antoine has been here for a while to come to america to remind what you say we have. Right, so were very hopeful. We have two other people on this panel that i think ill just give a brief introduction. They are two of the Top Economic Development thinkers and practitioners in the United States. Rebecca bagley is vice chair of the partnership at the university of pittsburgh. She took several of us on a tour of upitt last week, if you want to feel optimistic about america go ton a tour with rebecca at upitt worked for northeast ohio, worked in Pennsylvania State government, i may have a question about that. [laughter] and then bob is head of the Research Triangle park. Really iconic science park in the United States prior to that he worked with North Carolina state. So these folks are really at the cutting edge. But i want to talk, start tbred. So about four years ago, mark and i took a trip to netherlands. A tough job right, and you took us to antovin never heard of that before, and neither had mark, and we had a remarkable day where we saw a turnaround story, a city that filled up electronic at the heart of that city and lost tens of thousands of jobs to asia but within about 15 yearses, this is a city that is basically voted one of the most innovative cities in the world. What happened . I shall a long story. But originally it was built around two Companies One you mentioned phillips and now a sub city of portland based company, and they came and big trouble in the mid1990s. The phillips announced that they would shift their manufacturing to local countries, and that it was have 30,000 job losses. And in the same year, doc church went broke. So that was a horrible scenario for him only for the net or lands as well. Because phillips is phenomenon in harlem. Were proud of that company. Were critical but we have proud. Dutchman are always critical but they are also proud, and so that was trauma for that region but there were people who stood up and they thought of a very ambitious plan to make from that region antovin hightech hot spot on a specific item thats building hightech machinery. And but how do we do it and tell you that technology is too complex on your own. So people knew that you had to collaborate. And but in sharing brain po