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Source: Albuquerque Journal, N.迷你倉最平M.Dec. 17--Shortly after the city and the University of New Mexico announced plans to turn an old church building at Central and Broadway into what they describe as an innovation center, some local businesspeople got in touch with the Journal , independently of one another, to ask the same question.Why do they need a building?Here is a harder question: Where are they going to get the innovative and entrepreneurial people to put into that building?Empty buildings are everywhere, but, as the city/ UNM planning document for the project points out, our community "doesn't have (enough) entrepreneurs to create the new businesses that can take advantage of the region's research. A major challenge is attracting, training and keeping entrepreneurs in Albuquerque." That has been a major challenge for years.The development, called Innovate ABQ, is supposed to create physical space where researchers, entrepreneurs, students and investors all coexist in an ecosystem -- a rain forest, as UNM President Robert Frank sometimes puts it -- where innovation blooms, companies are launched and jobs are created.The planning document says Mayor Richard Berry and Frank are "committed to realizing a more productive and symbiotic relationship" between the city and university."The primary goal of Innovate ABQ is to catalyze this undertaking," it says. "In order to be present and visible, this new partnership needs a physical space. ... The partnership needs its own identity."The document says the building will "recalibrate the region as a competitive 21st century destination for research and innovation" by connecting the city to the campus and creating spaces "to attract the next generation of researchers."The city needs "spaces that enable people to work together if they want to: Collaboration happens in offices, but the best collaborative opportunities often exist outside the lab in places like cafes and parks," it says.The research district "will help retain students and researchers in Albuquerque" after they leave UNM. "In turn, a flourishing city with improved research-related employment opportunities will help attract a new generation of high-caliber students, faculty and staff."Innovate ABQ must become "a distinct, visible and vibrant physical place, a national model that will actually attract the students, researchers and entrepreneurs that are ultimately needed to achieve the partnership's larger goals."The theoretical support for such projects can be found, among other places, in the work of University of California economist Enrico Moretti, autho迷你倉 of "The New Geography of Jobs." Moretti has two relevant things to say on this subject.First, smart, innovative people like to be around other smart, innovative people. It is not enough, he says, that a company hires the smartest kids in the class. They have to be surrounded by an "entire ecosystem" of similar people and companies to be at their best. It is no accident that, according to a new study done for the National Bureau of Economic Research, 40 percent of the nation's entrepreneurs who are backed with venture capital are in Silicon Valley.Second, the way smart, innovative people live and spend their money tends to create a lot of jobs. Moretti estimates that the 12,000 Apple employees in Cupertino are responsible for 60,000 more jobs in the area. For that reason alone, you want these folks in your city.The question is, if we build it, will they come? If we build it, will the entrepreneurs who will move Albuquerque's economy into the 21st century suddenly spring from our university, from the labs, from the Air Force base, from the innovative companies that are already here?Maybe so, but it is tempting to conclude that if that was going to happen, it would have happened by now. Entrepreneurial spirit, not buildings, is what compels people to sacrifice the financial security and eight-hour workdays found at national labs and universities in order to follow a dream.The great innovative economies in our nation surround some of the nation's great universities: Stanford, MIT, Harvard and UT-Austin. These universities became great because they attracted great teachers.Great teachers want really good money, really good facilities and really good students. The universities became great because they demanded much of their faculty and students, and rewarded them when they performed.Entrepreneurs spring from that environment because experience shows them that they are better and smarter than anyone they could possibly work for. They set up shop in old warehouses, garages, their dorm rooms, their parents' basements. They are indifferent to buildings.If Innovate ABQ can gestate that spirit, it won't be because of a building. It will be because the people occupying the building are great.UpFront is a daily front-page news and opinion column. Comment directly to Winthrop Quigley at 823-3896 or wquigley@abqjournal. com. Go to ABQjournal.com/ letters/new to submit a letter to the editor.Copyright: ___ (c)2013 the Albuquerque Journal (Albuquerque, N.M.) Visit the Albuquerque Journal (Albuquerque, N.M.) at .abqjournal.com Distributed by MCT Information Servicesmini storage