By Ashley Landess
A Cluster Indeed
In August of 2008, South Carolina legislative leaders held a press conference to unveil a plan to “fix” the economy and “create jobs.” The big reveal consisted of a bunch of charts – including my favorite, a pyramid with 30+ government agencies listed in it – and the announcement of a new group called the Knowledge Sector Council. What was this council supposed to be? “The original high-level concept for the Knowledge Sector Council,” explained S.C. Research Authority President Bill Mahoney, “is to increase teamwork and outcomes between organizations involved in Knowledge Economy development through expanded awareness and communications.”
What does that mean? Five years later, it’s still not clear. In fact, we have no idea what the Knowledge Sector Council was created to do or whether it is doing anything now. What we do know is that South Carolinians’ quality of life and levels of income are not substantially better and higher than they were when the pyramid scheme was announced.
But the lack of actual success hasn’t stopped politicians and bureaucrats from creating more agencies and “public-private partnerships” (read: public for purposes of funding but private for purposes of transparency) to fix everything from the economy to education to the environment. They have bubbly sounding names such as EngenuitySC, SCLaunch, Innovista, RecyclonomicsSC and the recently announced TransformSC – this latest for the purpose of transforming education.
Their missions all sound pretty much the same – stacked with words such as “collaborate,” “partnership” and “innovation.” The umbrella organization for many of these projects seems to be New Carolina, which is billed as a “public-private partnership of business, government and academia” formed to “activate and upgrade clusters” and “enhance education and workforce training,” not to mention “launch internal and external marketing campaigns.”
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