collaboration to work in Austin?
CL: If it were easy, we wouldn’t need roles like this. I don’t kid myself that there is a formula that leads to certain success. There isn’t. This is going to be an iterative process. There will be missteps, ways in which, maybe alleys that we go down that we discover are blind alleys. It’s creation and recreation. One of the challenges here is how do you create a group of organizations and people who want to work together and prepare them to work together through those missteps. There needs to be a strong vision because it’s not going to be a smooth journey. No journey ever is.
The biggest challenge is understanding enough about the various organizations and stakeholders so that we can find ways to align this vision with their priorities. That always involves creating a great deal of trust. I’m cognizant of the fact that I’m going to have a steep learning curve in Austin. I haven’t spent the last 20 years of my life there. I need to spend some time really understanding what people care about, and developing that level of trust and working relationship. There are no short cuts.
X: Houston has also targeted health IT and digital health as places where it can use its resources to make an impact. Does that strike you as “competition?” If not, how have you thought about working with Houston?
CL: My intent is to learn more about what is happening in Texas in general. Houston is obviously a big hitter in this space. Austin is not Houston, and doesn’t want to be Houston. The opportunity is different. But you have to be aware that Houston is there. It doesn’t make sense to try to develop something without that realization. One of the things that Austin is really well positioned for is to create collaborations into other places, for a variety of reasons. Because Austin is the capital, because of its geography and what it’s well known for, there are great opportunities to collaborate with other places and learn from them. I’m hopeful there will be opportunities to open those discussions. This is something that is on the drawing board [in Austin], how can we collaborate with great neighbors like those in Houston?
X: Also are you familiar with the discussion about creating an innovation district in Houston? It’s early days—not even a site selected yet—but what advice would you offer leaders here?
CL: I’ll start by saying I’d never presume to give advice to another thriving metropolis. There are plenty of things that we [in Philadelphia] have looked towards Houston and thought, we have things to learn. I think they’re at a really interesting and exciting stage there. Any project like this can be approached in a similar way to how any startup would be approached: its business model, understanding what your capabilities are, your needs are. Then it’s about the process of product market fit. … The picture you’re going to get around product market fit is only as good as the data you put into it, who is around the table. Create frameworks that allow constructive discourse, the better the model is going to be. The better that product market fit, the better that model comes together. It sounds to me like Houston is doing that. I hope there are opportunities for us to exchange notes with Houston.
