The Detroit News
Jan. 27, 2025
Richard Florida
When asked to name leading urban innovation economies, most of us think of Silicon Valley, Boston-Cambridge, Austin and Seattle in the United States, and Bangalore and Shanghai overseas. Greater Detroit is seldom, if ever, even mentioned. That is ironic, because for much of the 20th century, the Detroit region was home to the world’s most technologically advanced manufacturing industries and the world’s largest complex of corporate R&D laboratories. And, for all of its struggles over the last half century, the region still has phenomenal strengths that it can leverage.
That’s the big takeaway of a new study I undertook on the potential of creating a world-class Innovation Corridor that can better leverage the incredible high-tech capabilities of Detroit and Ann Arbor, supported by the Detroit Regional Chamber, the University of Michigan, and others.
RELATED: New Report Highlights the Importance of a Detroit-Ann Arbor Innovation Corridor
Few places are better positioned than Detroit and Ann Arbor to capitalize on breakthrough new technologies like advanced mobility, artificial intelligence, software, robotics, green energy, smart infrastructure, life sciences, and more. Corporations across the two invest more than $20 billion per year on corporate research and development, more than any other region in the U.S. except New York, the San Francisco Bay Area, Boston, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia. Universities add another $2 billion, and series of cutting-edge applied innovation institutes have recently opened their doors, including Michigan Central. the University of Michigan Innovation Center Detroit, Tech Town, and the Michigan State-Henry Ford Health Sciences Center – with more to come.
Talent is the jet fuel of the innovation economy. Together, Detroit and Ann Arbor are home to more than one million knowledge workers. The three major universities that comprise Michigan’s University Research Corridor — the University of Michigan, Michigan State University, and Wayne State University — produce more than 100,000 undergraduates and nearly 50,000 graduate students per year, more than Boston-Cambridge, the San Francisco Bay Area, LA and San Diego, and the North Carolina Research Triangle. With a combined population of more than five million people, a Detroit-Ann Arbor Innovation Corridor would have more than enough economic scale to compete with any of those better-known innovation regions. The region has already begun to, being recently names as the world’s top emerging startup ecosystem.
Cutting-edge high-tech complexes typically combine the innovative strengths of a college town which is home to more leading research universities with the economic resources of nearby cities and metropolitan regions. Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area grew out of Palo Alto and Stanford University. Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Harvard and MIT are the engine of Boston’s high-tech growth. And Boulder has helped to power Denver’s more recent rise as an innovation complex.
But to date, Detroit and Ann Arbor have lacked the connective fiber and university-industry interplay that are the signatures of leading innovation clusters. That is now poised to change. At the Jan. 23rd Detroit Policy Conference, business, university, and political leaders from across the region met to identify the best ways to leverage their world-class corporate and university assets through the creation of a Detroit-Ann Arbor Innovation Corridor.
Until now, the dominant Silicon Valley model of innovation has been focused on the creation of entirely new industries, like e-commerce, social media, smart phones, the Cloud, and AI. For all its successes, this model has its downsides, conferring disproportionate benefits to wealthy entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, and techies, while fanning the flames of economic inequality and making housing unaffordable for just about everybody else.
By combining its leading-edge university R&D with its world-class industrial capabilities, a Detroit-Ann Arbor Innovation Corridor can create a new and better model for innovation, one that not only creates new industries but can help to transform its broader manufacturing base. By remaining true to its heritage and values, this new Innovation Corridor can chart a far more inclusive approach which generates a broader base of family-supporting jobs while lifting up much larger segments of the community.
Richard Florida is author of the recent report “Competing at Scale: The Case for A Detroit-Ann Arbor Innovation Corridor” supported by the Detroit Regional Chamber and the University of Michigan. He is visiting distinguished professor at Vanderbilt University and visiting senior fellow at the Kresge Foundation.
RELATED: Learn More About Detroit’s Innovation Ecosystem From the 2025 Detroit Policy Conference