David Bridges has been vice president of Georgia Tech’s Enterprise Innovation Institute (EI2) since December 2020. He is dedicated to bringing an increased focus on service to the organization through socioeconomic development. Below, he explains what that particular approach entails, how it differs from traditional economic development, and how EI2 can implement it to help even more people in communities across Georgia and beyond.
What is socioeconomic development?
For decades we have been economic developers. Adding societal impact to our mission means thinking beyond the metrics of jobs created or saved, revenue generated, and investment garnered. We need to think beyond the digits of metrics and celebrate the impact we have and can have on individuals.
Typically, we support those who are already working and companies that keep them employed. Under socioeconomic development, our organization has the opportunity to broaden our outreach by engaging those who are underemployed or who are not even participating in the economy. What tools, training, and resources do they need to lift up themselves and their families?
It’s a fine line of distinction but a distinction, nonetheless. Socioeconomic development is not just “feel-good” economic development; it’s very intentional and takes into account everything about a person or a community regarding their potential and possible outcomes for success and economic prosperity.
What are some of the tangible benefits that enhanced socioeconomic development brings to a community?
There are members of almost every community that need help. We can’t solve every societal problem, but can we help those people who are just on the cusp of participating in the work force but are lacking, for example, transportation to get to a job or daycare for their children. How can we figure out how to help?
When more people participate in the economy, more people pay taxes, which increases the tax base and furthers the development of programs for stimulating even more economic development and societal development. It starts the flywheel moving. According to the World Economic Forum, a small increase in global social mobility can add over half a billion dollars to the global economy.
Our view is practical, and it’s also altruistic. Let’s say you are already fortunate enough to have a job and a home and food security. Well, would you like to see your wider community lifted up as well? I think as citizens, it is on all of us to think about the bigger picture and how we can help our communities. Because as our communities improve, all our lives improve as well.
How are EI2 programs already helping people though more traditional economic development?
There are so many great examples. With the Georgia Manufacturing Extension Partnership (GaMEP), we go into a community and we help a manufacturing firm improve their energy efficiency, so they can save a little bit of money – maybe keep a job, maybe add a new line, maybe get some new equipment.
Then the Georgia Tech APEX Accelerator might go in and help another company get a government contract, and the Georgia MBDA Business Center (MBDA) might consult with a company in the community and help them get access to capital.
If you take a look at the recently released EI2 Impact Report for 2023, you’ll see that our programs overall help our clients save or create 47,000 jobs. That represents 47,000 families that can buy groceries, access healthcare, travel, enroll their children in activities, and contribute to their communities.
How are EI2 programs furthering the mission of socioeconomic development?
Because of how EI2 is structured, we’re uniquely positioned to address the entirety of the situation. Our focus is on applied research, which is research that changes people’s lives, so the “socio” part of economic development is vital to what we do.
We’ve been economic developers for six decades, but in the last few years, we’ve been asking more and more: “How do we help people who don’t already participate in the economy? What can we do to lift up the community?”
To cite one specific program in that vein, the Safety, Health, and Environmental Services group protected 28,000 Georgians from workplace hazards. At EI2 we try to focus on the people behind the numbers, always aware of how families and communities benefit when we foster economic opportunity across the board.
In Valdosta, the Partnership for Inclusive Innovation (Partnership) made sure that the ambulance system and fire trucks and first responders could get to the scene of an accident or fire more quickly to help save human lives.
The Center for MedTech Excellence is helping to develop life-saving technologies, and the work we’re doing under the Georgia Artificial Intelligence in Manufacturing (Georgia AIM) helps students gain access to STEM education so they can participate in the new AI manufacturing economy, where good paying jobs await. There’s also been some work around helping get broadband to certain communities so they can participate in the economy.
Georgia Tech’s CREATE-X initiative helps build confidence in undergraduates and empower them to launch successful startups. That program was first implemented here in the U.S. and is now being replicated globally in Colombia through the Georgia Tech Medellín Innovation and Entrepreneurship Center, which launched in 2023 and is overseen by EI2 Global. As of 2024, Medellín’s CREATE-X has trained 55 mentors and 160 students, with 37 student entrepreneurial projects being created, helping to improve their lives and support their community.
So we’ve got some projects that fit the description of socioeconomic development, but we’d like to be more intentional as we balance that approach with more traditional economic development.
The United Nations (UN) cites 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs), and we want to deliver on as many of those as we can. Zero hunger is one of them, as is access to clean water and sanitation, but there’s a whole area of societal development included in those SDGs that we’re not even touching. There are different subsets of the population that we can help in different ways. How do we go about finding resources for them and resources to help them?
What are some ways EI2 can increase our focus on socioeconomic development?
We can use the Georgia Tech brand to bring awareness and funding to the people in communities that are already doing this good work, like those who make sure kids have meals and don’t go hungry at school.
We need to ask who among us are participating in the economy and who is not – and for those who aren’t participating, what are the barriers that are preventing participation? For those that are participating and are underemployed, how can we provide the training they need in partnership with organization like the Technical College System of Georgia? Overall, we try to build some capacity in communities to address those barriers, whether it’s through providing support and training or simply bringing awareness and access to resources.
We’ve had so many companies moving to Georgia over the decades. It’s been called the top state in the country for business, and at some point, we’re going to encounter a workforce shortage. If we do face a shortage, rather than attracting people to the state, why not help lift up people in our state who are already here who don’t have access to jobs or opportunities?
How can EI2 build on its successes?
All of our programs are amazing, but given that many of them utilize point solutions driven by top-down policy – that is, federally funded or state-funded programs – they are not always able to address the holistic needs of a community.
Top-down point solutions are great for helping a certain population, but how much more could we achieve if we flipped the model? By that I mean we’d start with the needs of a community and apply existing solutions – or create new ones – to lift up that community. When you’re looking from the bottom up, you’re filling in the gaps that weren’t being solved by these larger federal- and state-based programs, and you can serve a greater number of people.
And, by the way, at EI2 we do implement solutions that incorporate community-based, bottom-up approaches along with top-down approaches. Both can successfully coexist as a force multiplier for our citizens.
Can you give examples of EI2 programs that exemplify that hybrid approach?
Georgia AIM prioritizes community engagement from the bottom up while also utilizing federally funded initiatives. It helps people get engaged at a community level so they gain the skills to participate in what will be a renaissance of the manufacturing economy through AI.
By working with regional commission, community leaders, chambers of commerce, and other conveners in communities, we are learning about some of the challenges that keep people from participating in the economy, and we’re opening up more conversations about how we might work together.
Our Center for Economic Development Research is doing amazing things to help municipalities clarify what makes their area unique and find ways to ready their communities for advance programs to revitalize downtowns and grow infrastructure and programs to support lifetime education, housing, and the quality of life for all members of the community.
The Partnership came on board as an EI2 program only four years ago, and since then they’ve also been engaging communities from bottom-up solutions. One notable example is their PIN Summer Internship program, which allows students to identify needs in their home communities and create and implement programs to help address them.
What is the path forward for EI2 in terms of socioeconomic development?
I’ve been at Georgia Tech for 30 years, and in recent years we’ve been trying to bring more community-based programming to our offerings. I see it as a 5-10 year journey to get there. If that vision of increased socioeconomic development is carried out, imagine how many more people we can help.
Overall, I’d like us to be a more holistic organization, an organization that engages in even more meaningful work – and the way I see it, nothing could be more meaningful than helping people. It’s the kind of thing that will touch your soul, and at the end of the day you can say, “Wow, together we did something really remarkable.”