Governor Spitzer has a big task ahead of him: He’s campaigned on the idea that the state can do something for the Upstate economy. We elect governors whom we believe can fix things, right?
So it was with great interest that many of us read the study by consultancy A.T. Kearney aimed at developing an agenda for the state’s economic development arm, Empire State Development. No, this wasn’t presented as state policy, but we all assume that Kearney would be shrewd enough not to issue a report that was seriously at odds with administration thinking.
The Kearney study made a number of good points. But I was disappointed to see them fall into the familiar trap of focusing much of their attention on “sexy” sectors, groups of firms based on technologies that hardly existed a generation before, sectors that every state and nation is chasing like a Labrador after a ball: “New York’s best hope for the future is to focus both statewide and regional investments on emerging sectors—especially nanotechnology, bioscience and cleantech.”
