Getting Ready to Race
Now is the time to break free from the industrial age

State and local leaders are to be credited with the passage of the Innovations Act in the 2000 General Assembly. The purpose of the act is to establish a knowledge-based economy to strengthen Kentucky’s position in a world that is increasingly driven by information and technology.

Work now is under way to transform the legislation from a paper document into a community-level reality. The state has been divided into regions that loosely reflect the economic strengths and common objectives of each. Groups of energized people are meeting to develop their strategies for catching up in an economy that has shifted from old to new to new/old to new/new at a dizzying pace.

We’re arriving unfortunately late to this game, and it is a bit scary to contrast the reality of educational attainment in Kentucky with the fact that a knowledge-based economy has an educated workforce and citizenry as its foundation.

We must, as a result, ask ourselves a fundamental question: What is the knowledge economy to be in Kentucky, especially in the rural parts of our state? We talk about high tech, biomedicine, and information technologies because we know that’s what other folks have – the ones on the east and west coasts and at some places in between.

The concepts are intangible, but the results we want are real: smart kids, like ours, doing the work but staying at home where they enjoy good pay and the amenities that define a high quality of life.

So, what are we to do? We start by looking inside ourselves for the strength that has long been stored there and reinforcing our rhetoric by creating homegrown opportunities to use the skills and knowledge of our citizens. High tech, biomedical and information technology, yes. But fashioned in a way to apply and enhance the talents we have.

Kentucky’s story began, as did that of most places in the South, with an agrarian economy based primarily on tobacco-supported family farms. It moved late into the industrial age (giving weight to Mark Twain’s conclusion that it would be well to be in Kentucky when the world ends because everything happens here 20 years late).

Today, in our typical fashion, we have clung longer than most to the industrial age, often doing whatever we can to increase jobs by raw numbers instead of by quality.

Where do we go from here? The census tells us that, reversing earlier trends, the end of the last century found people beginning to return to the nation’s heartland. People are leaving the mega-congestion of the coasts in favor of smaller places. But these smaller places are different from those of the past, and they are expected to offer such amenities/necessities as airports, universities, art, recreational opportunities and cultural diversity.

People are seeking meaning – through work or after-work activities and through strong community ties. All of these are possible in small-town environments that pay attention to quality of life issues.

These people also seek meaningful work, more and more of them in human-sized businesses that are undergoing a noticeable revitalization.

The perception that consumers wanted to get where they were going faster at any cost led to the development of the Concorde. Now a new consumer is taking hold, one who seeks comfort more than speed and prefers the unique to mass production. Such attitudes create a perfect environment for small-scale, knowledge-economy businesses that could be developed in Kentucky communities.

Kentucky’s history also is one of entrepreneurship, one that was nearly snuffed out by industrialization and the mindset that an acceptable life was one that involved a minimal education and working for the “boss.”

Here’s the bottom line. We can lament the fact that we’re behind. Or, we can move forward by combining old strengths with new strategies. Racecar driver Dale Earnhart, in interviews broadcast after his death, addressed questions about the rules and regulations of his sport with a simple question: “Do we want to race or not?”

We must ask the same of ourselves about our commitment to the future of our state.

Sylvia L. Lovely is executive director and CEO of the Kentucky League of Cities
editorial@lanereport.com

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