provincial economics

Yesterday, the program commission of the Provincie Utrecht. I was invited to an expert meeting on the economics part of the program. The few attendants could then exchange our views on the issue. Nice meeting.

A bit to my surprise after the program written for the city Utrecht in the gemeenteraad elections, it turns out that groenlinksers in the province do want to make a choice for the innovative economy. In Utrecht city, the ones that argue in favor of this view, did meet the resistance of people that want a more social economy, based in the involvement of the outsiders to the labour market. Obviously enough, these people are not the highly educated ones that come to the front of the discussion about the creative economy. But well, the issue “sneaks in” in the provincie program. Fine with me.

In my view, groenlinks had developed a nice tale. Describing the successes of Utrecht as a power source of knowledge, ideas such as innovation platforms, and further collaboration in between hospitals, universities and government are presented. But again, we need more sharp proposals that illustrate this big -and rather general- ideas.

Along these lines, we discussed the use of innovatie vouchers, not only in between the ondernemer and a big research institution, but among ondernemers. Then we move to the “care valley” idea, a utrecht version of sillicon valley, where the big institutions that utrecht has could offer a collaborative package. Big hospitals, a university strong in bio-sciences, and a nice city. All together should make a success history.

Nicely enough, in the meeting was Jasper Fastl, candidate to the provincie, who reminded us that we should still keep in mind the allochtoon ondernemer. That connection could also help us to link the choice for the innovative economy with the outsiders of the labour market. The allochtoon ondernemer sector grows much faster that the autochtoon ondernemer. But it also fails more frequently. So groenlinks could also ask for further understanding and support of this important sector of the economy.

All in all, a nice meeting.