Page 19 - Robeson Living Spring 2019

Within the last year the city of Pembroke with collabo- leading innovation cities must expand beyond the Tri-
ration from Comtech and the Thomas Family Center En- angle and Charlotte.
trepreneurship Incubator known as the HUB completed
Innovate NC, a cross-city learning collaborative of 5 Being involved in the first Innovate NC program has
communities in North Carolina. The primary goal of In- provided the impetus for the city of Pembroke and
novate NC was to enhance innovation-related economic COMtech Business Park to look at creative ways to fos-
development and to advance critical new knowledge re- ter a new innovative ecosystem. Tom Hall, the Director
lated to that goal. Innovate NC was an imitative created of the HUB and his staff have done a spectacular job
and administered by NC State University’s Institute for of designing programs, creating teaching opportunities,
Emerging Issues and their partners the Research Triangle and bringing in speakers centered around entrepreneur-
Foundation and the Kenan Creative Collaboratory who ship and business creation that it’s easy to see the great
helped finance the project. strides the town and the region are making with regard
to business creation and workforce opportunities, hope-
In February 2015, the Emerging Issues Forum, Innova- fully some of them will grow and decide to locate at
tion Reconstructed, attracted more than 1,000 innovation COMtech.
experts, advocates, and entrepreneurs from across the
state and around the world to explore how North Carolina We are anxiously awaiting the opening of the new head-
companies and communities will innovate to compete in quarters of Lumbee River Electric Membership’s new
an era of global connections, transformative technology, headquarters here at COMtech. This beautiful new
and constant change. building and surrounding storage facility for the Co-
Op will be a great addition to COMtech and the city of
They learned that North Carolina is mired mid-pack Pembroke. LREMC hopes to be able to begin operations
among the nation’s states in overall innovation capac- from the new headquarters building by the end of April.
ity and effectiveness. The Institute for Emerging Issues
study, using SAS Visual Analytics software, found that Next door from the COMtech offices at UNCP’s Of-
North Carolina sits well below the top quartile of states fice For Regional Initiatives work is ongoing to bring
and even trails the U.S. average on key innovation indi- to market a very promising drug to combat Alzheimer’s
cators, including output and compensation. Current trend disease and dementia. Dr. Bahr and his staff have a pat-
lines indicated that North Carolina will fail to reach the ented drug that they are trying to gain interest in from
top quartile unless we involve many more people in more pharmaceutical companies in order to move toward of-
of our cities in a broad innovation turn-around effort fering hope for those suffering from these horrible de-
through which we reconstruct our innovation model and bilitating diseases.
expand innovation capacity. North Carolina’s roster of

Lumbee River Electric
Membership

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