Hold On To Your Brightest Young People, Michigan

I don’t have five pithy things to tell entrepreneurs in Michigan, but I do have one comment based on my 16 years in Ann Arbor trying to help commercialize biotech/medtech innovations at the University of Michigan.

Do everything possible to keep your young in Michigan. The three research universities in Michigan, U-M, Michigan State University, and Wayne State University, produce a lot of talent who can function at world-class levels. Unfortunately, most leave the state with their degrees. For example, two-thirds of the graduates of the College of Engineering at the University of Michigan leave the state with their degrees.

The few who stay do very well. For example, there is a small but robust biotech entrepreneurial community in Ann Arbor made up almost exclusively of U-M alums who wanted/needed to stay around Ann Arbor. The best thing the state can do is to define incentives to change the two-thirds leaving into two-thirds staying. Complex economic policies trying to bring new business and capital into the state are doomed if two-thirds of the talent routinely leaves. I think the policy folks should focus on ways to allow the high-quality talent already available in Michigan to stay in the state.

[Editor’s note: To help launch Xconomy Detroit, we’ve queried our network of Xconomists and other innovation leaders around the country for their list of the most important things that entrepreneurs and innovators in Michigan can do to reinvigorate their regional economy.]

Author: Matthew O'Donnell

Matthew O'Donnell is the Dean of the University of Washington's College of Engineering. He came to the UW in September 2006 from the University of Michigan, where he was chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering. O'Donnell is a physicist by training with undergraduate through doctoral degrees from Notre Dame. He joined the University of Michigan faculty in 1990 as a professor of electrical engineering and computer science. In 1998, he was named the Jerry W. and Carol L. Levin Professor of Engineering and was appointed chair of the Biomedical Engineering Department in 1999. He won several engineering teaching awards at Michigan. O'Donnell, who was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in February 2009, is an expert in ultrasound imaging, and other new diagnostic imaging technologies, including ultrafast optics, in vivo microscopy, catheter imaging of coronary arteries, optoacoustic arrays, and elasticity and molecular imaging. He is principal or co-principal investigator on numerous research projects funded by the National Institutes of Health and other federal agencies. O'Donnell holds 50 patents and has authored or co-authored more than 200 publications. He is associate editor of the journal Ultrasonic Imaging, is a permanent member of the National Institutes of Health Imaging Study Section, a fellow of both IEEE and AIMBE, and a member of Sigma Xi, and the American Physical Society. Earlier steps on his career path included postdoctoral fellowship and senior research associate positions at Washington University, St. Louis, a research fellowship at Yale University, and a decade of private-sector experience as a research and development physicist at General Electric in Schenectady, New York.