- Coming up on "One Detroit," we are at the Detroit Policy Conference hosted by the Detroit Regional Chamber.

There are hundreds of people here that talk about driving the innovation economy in Southeast Michigan.

Just ahead, we are gonna hear from top business and policy leaders about attracting innovative businesses and talent to Michigan.

Stay right there.

"One Detroit" is next.

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(gentle bright music) - Hey, I am Stephen Henderson.

- And I am Zoe Clark.

"One Detroit" is coming to you this week from the Detroit Regional Chamber's Detroit Policy Conference at the MotorCity Casino.

- This year's conference theme is, Driving the Innovation Economy: How Could Michigan Stand Out In a Competitive World Where New Technologies are Growing at Rapid Speed?

Conversations focused on attracting and growing startups, high tech companies investment and talent.

- I had a chance to sit down with Richard Florida.

He's founder of the Creative Class Group and the world's leading urbanist.

We talked about his new report on possibilities for the region's innovation economy.

Tell me about this new report.

Ann Arbor, Detroit, Innovation Corridor.

- Well, I'm so lucky, Zoe, that the folks here at the Detroit Chamber at the University of Michigan in the mayor's office said we're in, you know, I had been pushing this for a while gently.

- Yes.

- Saying there's Ann Arbor with this spectacular research university, Detroit, which is kind of the symbol of a city that's rebuilt itself.

And they came and said, "Would you do this report?"

And I was like, "Yeah."

- You're like, "It's in my head already."

- There's nothing I'd rather do.

So what I did probably for the past six months is really try to enumerate the assets and sort of look at the playing field.

What I found is when you look at other innovation economies, the Bay Area, the Boston area, you know, the Research Triangle, Austin, or you look overseas, London, Stockholm, Berlin, Toronto, it stacks up really well but it's not organized.

You know, and I talk about this in the report.

20 billion in corporate research and development.

Like, fourth or fifth in the nation.

3 billion in university research and development.

Third in the nation.

Labeled this area as one of the best emerging or the best emerging startup ecosystem.

And because of affordability, you know, Bay Area's gotten expensive, New York's crazy expensive, even Austin and Miami.

Affordable quality of life, and then the idea is how do you pull it together and don't have, you know, the business community in Detroit, you know, in the center city and then a college town.

And here's the rub.

When I looked at this, something...

I should have known it, but it's not just having the... Everyone says, "Well, you need a great research university like Stanford."

"You need a great research university like MIT."

"You need a great research university like Michigan or Michigan State."

What I notice in every one of these places, it's a great college town and a great city.

Right?

It's not San Francisco, it's Palo Alto where Stanford was, and San Francisco.

- Yeah.

- It's not Boston, it was Cambridge Little town, college town, and Boston.

Research Triangle has two.

Durham and Chapel Hill with Raleigh.

Boulder and Denver.

And then I said to myself, "This is a no-brainer.

You have both components and more.

You gotta put it together."

- I'm curious about if in your mind having read the report, one of the things I did notice is a lack of sort of policy prescriptions, right?

So I wanna allow you a magic wand here, Richard Florida.

And if you were allowed to pass, whether it's one piece of legislation, get these stakeholders to do one thing right now to take what you've put together and really try to start building, you know, what needs to happen, what would that be?

- I would say there's three.

- Okay, you get three magic wands.

- And I didn't want to prescribe this in the report.

Because I'm an outsider.

I'm not part of this.

People like me, but I wanted the environment, the stakeholders to figure this out, and this be a spur.

But now you put me on the spot.

First thing is they need to get organized.

And I know the chamber wants to do this, the university, but they need to find a group.

I don't want us prescribe who's on that, which universities, all the universities.

But they need a group of business university and civic leaders to work this problem.

I called it a Detroit Ann Arbor Innovation Alliance.

Call it what you will.

I don't want to dictate it.

They need that.

Number two, and this came up in every conversation, you said it, It's hard sometimes to get between when you're visiting your friends.

- Yeah.

- We need better transit.

- Transportation.

- I mean, when that was said this morning, folks, the room broke into applause.

That was the only applause line that I, you know, someone on my panel said, "We need transit."

- Yeah.

- "We need transit."

Now, I have six nieces and nephews at the University of Michigan.

It's a schlep to get here.

They take the bus, they go in a car, they go in an Uber.

Transit.

Making this seamless the way it is in Boston, New York, the Bay Area.

The third one that came up, there's a lot of conversation about advanced mobility, obviously, with the auto industry, Michigan Central, the computer scientists, the AI people.

But we talked a lot with the business leadership here about a second thing.

Urban innovation.

You know, this is the place that has rebuilt itself.

Michigan Central is the... You know, it's the shining example for the world.

What if we thought about new building technology, new construction technology, new ways of building communities, new ways of using artificial intelligence?

This new ways of connecting people through new mobility, this could be the test bed for a whole new ways of placemaking in city building.

So those would be my three.

- Zoe, our colleague Nolan Finley and I had a chance to talk with some of the guest speakers here at the conference, and we talked to them about attracting business investment and talent in a highly competitive industry.

Take a look.

- I'm here with Carolina Pluszczynski, Chief Operating Officer of Michigan Central.

Welcome.

- Thank you for having me today.

- So we think about Michigan Central, we think about the train station.

But it's a much bigger campus.

Can you tell us what's going on in that area around the train station and what you hope to accomplish?

- So Michigan Central is 30 acres.

It is a combination of, right now we have four buildings in that area.

So the train station, obviously, is the center point and, you know, the iconic building.

But there's the book depository, which is the hub of innovation.

We have a garage that is used as a testing site and a laboratory.

So it's not just a standard garage, but it has enough equipment where you can test future in charging solutions in there, wireless charging solutions.

And then we have some other buildings and a lot of future development that will be planned.

- Are you hitting your marks in terms of the sort of companies you wanted to attract, the sort of tenets you were seeking?

- Yeah, I think we've made great strides in the innovation in the startup.

So for us, this is about creating a central hub where you have founders, industry partners, and academics all working together.

Because that's how difficult these problems are.

When you're looking at new mobility systems or trying to transform an industry, you need all of those players.

And so from the startup perspective, we've partnered with new lab and other accelerators and we are at about 135 to 140 companies that have come to Detroit.

- So this isn't all Ford Motor Company.

- It's not.

We have two areas of Ford Motor Company that have taken space in the station.

And those are because the work that they're doing is really on that edge of breakthrough technologies.

There's other companies, though, that we have right now as working as part of the membership.

And I think over time, they may take space.

It's like a puzzle of how do you get the right balance between the startups and the industry.

- And so the idea is that these companies will collaborate given their proximity to one another.

You'll put 'em together and watch 'em work.

- I think it's more of an orchestration.

Because if you think about the way the automotive industry has done innovation for years, it's been very insular.

If we're gonna transform the industry with these breakthrough technologies, you need to have different players in there.

And that cross-sector collaboration becomes really important.

I'll use propulsion systems as an example.

You need to have technology, you need to have the automotive companies, you need to have energy companies, and you need to have urban planning, 'cause where does the infrastructure go?

And collaborating on that gets you to a faster result.

- You have what's happening at Michigan Central, the Henry Ford project, other things that are going on, the District Detroit developing.

It feels like we're on, you know, the launching pad here.

What do we need next to fill in all this infrastructure?

- Yeah, we have great momentum.

I think what's happening is that the ecosystem is fragile and we have to work together as a local ecosystem and find those partnerships.

- From a policy standpoint, what do we need?

- So there's some gaps.

You know, if I think about the tools that the state has had to date, they're for large battery plants or larger companies.

And so they've been helping us with smaller grants to attract the startups here and to keep the startups here.

And so we've been working to kind of close those gaps, identify them with our state partners.

But together, I think is where we can drive that policy change.

- So give us some examples of the type of work that's going on at Michigan Central campus that we might not notice as we drive by.

- Sure.

I mean, we have amazing startups.

Today at the Policy Conference, Darren Riley was talking about, he's doing air quality testing and putting sensors out there around using the data to be able to anticipate, you know, air quality issues.

We have companies that are building the first electric ATVs.

We have companies that are building RVs that are electric and they're modular inside.

And those companies came here and have grown tremendously.

- So is the idea that, you know, we'll get these startups here, get 'em going, give 'em the nurturing they need, and then they'll go off and, you know, create big companies with lots of employees.

- Yeah.

Maybe take space in the station.

We have a company that, we have a warehouse now.

They took 12,000 square feet in a warehouse 'cause they needed bigger manufacturing space.

And so that's the collaboration we do with the city, is like, we need to find them space to keep them here and help them grow.

- Do you also connect them with investors?

- We are.

That is another probably gap in our ecosystem, is the capital for these companies.

And so we've been working with venture capital firms, inviting them in.

We have about 21 of them that sit within our ecosystem now.

But really, getting, inviting others to come in and encouraging them to invest here and to locate here.

- So look out a decade and tell me what you see on that campus.

- I think you'll start to see the rhythm, the flywheel going.

I think we'll see the academic institutions partnering differently.

Research coming out of those institutions that applied research that turns into technology and technology transfers.

I think you'll see big partnerships across companies that you've never seen before.

And hopefully we will not seize the future of mobility to anybody else.

It should stay in Detroit.

- So I'm here with Johnnie and Alexa Turnage, the founders of Black Tech Saturdays.

Welcome to "One Detroit."

- Thank you for having us.

- And welcome to the Detroit Policy Conference.

You guys just got off stage where you talked about all of this excitement at Michigan Central and the book depository where you (indistinct).

But let's start with the idea for Black Tech Saturdays.

Where's it come from and what's the idea?

- Yeah, yeah.

So Black Tech Saturdays, we had a very organic beginning.

It was really in the beginning, me and another tech founder just getting together on Saturdays to work with each other, and then people would have questions.

And we were like, "You know what?

Instead of being here for six, seven hours, why don't we just open this up and see?"

At the time, we thought we'd be like maybe a cool safe space, a few nerdy like blurs.

And the very first BTS let us, and I was like, "This is different."

We had investors we had never met show up, people who were in tech that we were like, "Oh, we didn't know y'all existed organizations."

Someone from the DoD, and we're like, "All right, I think we need some more arms around this."

And the way we like to describe what the idea is, in 2023, it was building a safe space, and we did a lot of listening to what the community needed.

We saw tech founders, tech talent, and tech curious people like, actually, "I want to know more about the stuff.

I'm trying to break into this industry."

And 2024, we had a amazing year movement.

- Yeah.

I see you guys states everywhere.

- Right?

Everywhere.

And then we learned, I'm like, "There's a lot of people."

To date, we've had 19,000 people come out.

- Is that right?

- And this is our year that we understand, it's not only important that we continue to help and coach entrepreneurs, but creating pipelines to more procurement opportunities, more constructs.

It is about dollars in the pocket, not just for entrepreneurs, but for talent.

We have some amazing people upskilling and we've seen people who are like, you know, they just graduated from college.

And from being a greeter volunteering at BTS, they got that paid internship, and now they have a full time job.

We've seen people go from making $16 an hour to 85K, and it's really about how do you build the kind of community that Black and brown and underrepresented communities need to thrive in tech as Michigan becomes this new tech land.

- Yeah, I mean a lot of people would say, "Why do we need something like this in the early part of the 21st century?"

Right?

I always get people asking, "Well, things are a lot better for African Americans than they used to be, but there are still real hurdles and real barriers."

And just that feeling of I know a place where I can go and be myself and fit in and get connected to other people like me.

That's really important.

- It's super important.

I remember when me and Johnnie went to one of our first tech events.

We were the only underrepresented founders in the room and we're like, "Okay, well, what does it look like for us to come together?"

BTS is about anybody.

I don't care if you're Black, white, yellow, red.

It's an inclusive space where we can all come together to learn and grow and really drive innovation at a different level.

We are building some of the most resilient professionals, entrepreneurs, and take curious people who are just getting to their next milestone through workshops, through true access to new information.

And that's what's been, I think, our guiding light, just focusing on the people.

And we're deeply passionate about building those founders.

The storm of entrepreneurship is real and we're like, "How can we ground them and surround them with this community that can really help them to grow?"

- So I could plus one that though.

I mean, while we're farther into the future and we've come a long way, Black people only represent 7% of the tech industry.

We get less than 1% of VC capital.

Bank banking loans aren't actually that easy for entrepreneurs to get.

So I'm like, the capital's not there, the positions are harder because you're the only one.

The reason BTS came sticky is I'm like, even if you're working in corporate America, you have a community to go to on the weekend to meet some other people who do what you're doing.

Maybe during the week you all meet up at a coffee shop or... We've had people, they're going through courses together, they've taken on projects together.

And I'm like, it's just different when you have that power in the community.

I think Doug Song touched on it, really powerful.

The social capital is one of the most important parts of building an innovation community.

- Yeah.

- So innovation community.

I wanna talk about innovation because I think, you know, this is Detroit.

This is in many ways, you know, a huge center of innovation.

It has been for a long time.

When you say that word though, what do you guys mean by that?

What is innovation, what is innovative, and why is that so important?

- So when I say innovation, I think about innovation's a word that everybody throws out, but it's really a tool that gets to something.

And I think here in Detroit, innovation's about how we're getting towards prosperity and increased productivity.

How are we gonna do things and level the fact that (indistinct) in Detroit, the median income is $36,000, $33,000?

And I'm like, an innovation community is solving a problem, and the problems we have to solve in Detroit are great.

We have to make sure there is prosperity for all and people can see themselves in the future.

So we have a much more broader term.

It's not just the entrepreneurship service organizations or government, but how do we build prosperity for all and use technology as a vehicle to do that?

- Yeah, yeah.

What about you?

What's innovation?

- When I think about innovation, I just think about the fact that sometimes we forget as we approach Black History Month, Black and brown people have been building innovation, building tech tools for our country for generations.

And we have some of the coolest, dopest people here in Detroit.

When I think of Carla Walker-Miller, when I think of David Harver, who has been building and building groundbreaking things at the ground level, I just think of that.

That's what I think of when I think of innovation.

We have to remind our community, "Hey, we've been doing these.

These ideas that you've had in your head, let's see if we can cultivate that.

What does discovery look like in those situations to get you to your next step?"

- And I'm joined now by Doug Song.

He is the co-founder and president of the Song Foundation.

So good to have you here.

And Khalilah Burt Gaston, executive director of the Song Foundation.

So good to talk to you again.

So, Doug, I wanna start with you.

You know, this whole conference, right?

We're talking about an innovation economy.

I'm so curious from you who literally is sort of like the definition of innovator.

What does that mean when you think about Michigan having a innovation economy?

- I call innovation the commercialization of invention.

We have a very strong business sector and we have a very strong research and educational sector that can connect to go produce these companies.

Now that said, entrepreneurship is much more than just that.

And there's a path around research commercialization, all that stuff, is well trod by, you know, a certain set of folks.

But really, the goal is to make sure that every Michigander has the opportunity to build a high growth, high wage business.

- And so we talk about that.

We wanna make sure that every Michigander is able to do that.

Khalilah, we're gonna talk a little bit about what the foundation does to help that.

But I'm curious right now about the paths that you see for the future of Michigan so that every Michigan, or, like, what does that need to look like so that can actually happen?

- An imperative for us is to diversify our economy.

- Yeah.

- And diversity is strength.

And we have a challenge where we're victims of our own historical success with industries that produce, again, some heavy reliance on very specific sort of economies when really, we have a rainforest.

We have all these amazing companies and people and resources, rich in intellectual capital, rich in human capital, even rich in financial capital.

- Yeah.

- But we have a challenge in that, you know, there's still a gap of what I would say is social capital.

- Yeah.

- Connect the dots and then make sure that those things don't stay siloed the way they are sometimes here today.

- Yeah.

And tell me a little bit, I mean, we've talked about this before, but how the foundation is helping to try to fill those gaps and make those connections.

- Yeah, I mean, I think the first way that we've done it obviously is through some well-placed investments.

So you heard today from Black Tech Saturdays.

That was one of our first grants to really help Johnnie and Alexa launch BTS, as well as grow it.

But a part of what we've also been doing is really working to demystify tech.

I do think that a lot of people, whether you're in government or you're in philanthropy, (indistinct) education don't understand what tech is, don't really understand the pathways and how we get from where we are now to where we need to be as a state.

- And how we make it inclusive?

Like, we've talked about this too, how we make sure that there's a quality angle to all of this, which I know is something that the foundation really works towards as well.

- We really believe that we need to make more pie in Michigan.

And so shared prosperity and collaboration is one of our values and it's something that we talk about, but something that we do.

So we've been convening tables with foundations all across the region.

We've also helped to bring together cross-sector partnerships with business, philanthropy, government.

Doug talked a little bit about our Midwest innovation roadshow, where we really got to see what other cities and states are doing in the Midwest.

And I think that was eye-opening.

Because here in Michigan, sometimes we think that we're still where we were about 20 or 30 years ago.

But we do need to make some improvements.

- Well, to that point, I'm curious about what you heard during this road show.

Where does Michigan stack up?

- We are rich in all the ingredients, right, to produce a very rich ecosystem.

But again, there are inefficiencies and gaps, and some of that are historical.

Part of that I think is kind of, again, to continue to sort of focus on kinda a top-down sort of approach where innovation ecosystems require community.

And the secret ingredient behind almost any working environment, innovation system is a environment community at the center of that where there's investments in people, in relationships and the networks that actually, you know, bring people together.

Because technology is not its own sector.

Actually, technology is every sector, right?

It's like electricity, right?

It sort of powers everything that we do in almost every area of our lives these days.

And if we don't take the time to enable folks, right, to be able to wield those tools of change and opportunity, then technology will shape society instead of vice versa.

And we need technology to work for people.

We need an economy that works for people.

- So you said sort of top-down.

Do you think folks at the top understand or hear that message that community does need to be more involved?

- I think a part of it is really helping to bring people together that otherwise wouldn't be in rooms together, right?

And so you have community leaders, you have business leaders, you have investors who are all talking, whether that's sharing a meal together or going over a trip.

You know, I think that's really important, and that's some of the social capital and social networking that doesn't happen as much as we need it here in Metro Detroit.

- What happens to the state if we don't get on board, right?

Like, I'm not looking for some dire prediction, but, like, what will the state continue to look like?

We've had conversations about population loss, about other states getting, you know, folks coming in, starting these businesses.

What happens if we don't get on board?

- Well, I have a 13-year-old daughter who says that living in Michigan is like watching a dinosaur become extinct.

So that was like a dagger right in my heart, right?

As a mother who wants her to stay here, you know, raise a family.

But I just joined a board and they said that right now the economic indicator was that we needed 60% of Michiganders to have some sort of post-secondary degree.

Right now, if you look at the economic and educational indicators, that's 72%.

And it's growing every day because our economic indicators, like income and wealth, continue to decline.

So that's where we are as a state.

And I think that unfortunately, people don't really see that data, they don't really embrace it.

And more importantly, they don't understand the strategies that will help us address it.

- I hate to paint too negative of a picture or anything, but I'll just say, I've heard people talk about the unfortunate demise of Michigan at some point being, because it's old and cold, right?

If we can't figure out how to retain young people, well, they're not gonna change the cold, but if we can't retain young people, they are (indistinct) our future.

And again, we've seen demographics equal destiny in so many other parts of the world where, again, whether aging economies are struggling to actually care for their populations the way that they need, we need to have our young people as invested in our future because we're invested in their success in their future.

- [Zoe] Yeah.

- That'll do it for this week's special edition of "One Detroit," coming to you from Detroit Policy Conference at MotorCity Casino.

Thanks for watching.

- You can see more "One Detroit" stories, including an ongoing series on the future of work at onedetroitpbs.org.

- And as always, you can connect with us anytime on social media.

Take care and we'll see you next time.

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Masco, serving Michigan communities since 1929.

Support also provided by: The Cynthia & Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit PBS.

- [Announcer 2] DTE Foundation is a proud sponsor of Detroit PBS.

Among the state's largest foundations committed to Michigan-focused giving, we support organizations that are doing exceptional work in our state.

Learn more at dtefoundation.com.

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