First in Future: Where Emerging Ideas Take Flight

The Asheville of today is a many-splendored thing. It’s appeared on numerous “Best of” lists and received countless titles – like “One of the Best Places to Reinvent Your Life,” “The Happiest City in America for Women,” “The Hippie Capital of the South,” “The Best City for Locavores,” “The Most Romantic Place in U.S.A. and Canada,” and, of course, “Beer City U.S.A.” – and combined with its natural physical beauty, it offers many enticing features for newcomers. This week’s guest remembers Asheville before all those awards, when it was really struggling to recover from the Great Depression. As a direct descendent of George Washington Vanderbilt, the man behind the Biltmore House, Jack Cecil* and his family have been in Asheville for generations. As we talk with Jack about how Asheville recovered, changed and grew into itself, we hope you’ll listen for some of the ways he’s learned what it takes to develop communities in the future in a way that lasts.

The Asheville of today is a many-splendored thing. It’s appeared on numerous “Best of” lists and received countless titles – like “One of the Best Places to Reinvent Your Life,” “The Happiest City in America for Women,” “The Hippie Capital of the South,” “The Best City for Locavores,” “The Most Romantic Place in U.S.A. and Canada,” and, of course, “Beer City U.S.A.” – and combined with its natural physical beauty, it offers many enticing features for newcomers. This week’s guest remembers Asheville before all those awards, when it was really struggling to recover from the Great Depression. As a direct descendent of George Washington Vanderbilt, the man behind the Biltmore House, Jack Cecil* and his family have been in Asheville for generations. As we talk with Jack about how Asheville recovered, changed and grew into itself, we hope you’ll listen for some of the ways he’s learned what it takes to develop communities in the future in a way that lasts. Tune in to part one, and check back on Friday for part two!

With a name like Marshall Brain, there’s quite an expectation to live up to—but for this guy, director of the Engineering Entrepreneurs Program at NC State, he makes being a "brain"-iac look easy. For one, he’s relentlessly curious about everything. As the founder of HowStuffWorks.com, Marshall set out to explain to people how stuff works – literally. And he’s extended that curiosity and that easy, straightforward sense of information-sharing beyond his one-time hobby. He’s the former host of Nat Geo’s “Factory Floor with Marshall Brain,” the author of more than 20 books, and a frequent guest on CNN, “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” MSNBC, “Good Morning America” and more. As you might imagine, it’s hard to have a boring – or short! – conversation with Marshall, so we’re breaking it into two parts. In part two, we pick up in a place that may seem a little remote from North Carolina - Mars. As you listen, we think you'll see how thinking a little bit about Mars can help us think differently about our state's rural-urban divide, about early childhood education, and about the challenges and opportunities of automation. Listen to part one at bit.ly/IEIFiF141!

With a name like Marshall Brain, there’s quite an expectation to live up to—but for this guy, director of the Engineering Entrepreneurs Program at NC State, he makes being a "brain"-iac look easy. For one, he’s relentlessly curious about everything. As the founder of HowStuffWorks.com, Marshall set out to explain to people how stuff works – literally. And he’s extended that curiosity and that easy, straightforward sense of information-sharing beyond his one-time hobby. He’s the former host of Nat Geo’s “Factory Floor with Marshall Brain,” the author of more than 20 books, and a frequent guest on CNN, “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” MSNBC, “Good Morning America” and more. As you might imagine, it’s hard to have a boring – or short! – conversation with Marshall, so we’re breaking it into two parts. In part one, we sit down with Marshall to talk about cleaning toilets, flying fighter jets, and whether we should be optimistic or pessimistic about the future of jobs in North Carolina. Plus! We ask him what he tells young people is most important when they’re starting a business. Tune in to part one, and check back for part two!

A couple months ago, a group of CEOs from some of North Carolina's largest corporations gathered in Garner and did something remarkable: They folded themselves into chairs and began reading books to five-year-olds. It's part of an effort by a group called the Business Roundtable to highlight the importance of early childhood education. The CEOs at the announcement that day were advocating for more investment in a series of things that are more likely to result in more students being really good at reading by the end of third grade. Their argument is that it's not only a good thing to do—it's in their business communities' interest. This week we talk with Jenn Mann, head of HR at SAS, about how investing in early childhood programs is helping SAS tackle one of industry's most pressing issues: talent retention.

Per educator Karl Fisch, the challenge of educators is to “prepare students for jobs that don’t exist yet, where they’ll be using technology that hasn’t been invented yet, in order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet.” Education needs to become much more about teaching people not just a body of facts but how to learn, ensuring learning becomes a lifelong process. Community colleges are critical to equipping students of all ages with the necessary skills to meet the challenge of change in our state, and with nearly 800,000 people enrolled in one of North Carolina’s 58 community colleges each year, the community college system’s role in addressing the FutureWork challenge continues to grow. This week, we talk with former NC Lieutenant Governor Walter Dalton, now president of Isothermal Community College in Columbus, to talk about how community colleges are thinking about their work going forward, and what that means for all of us.

In the center of Pembroke, a sleepy town of just 3,000 in southeastern North Carolina, the Thomas Family Center for Entrepreneurship at UNC Pembroke has set up shop in a restored furniture store. Heading the center is an unlikely leader: Thomas Hall, a man who, until recently, worked in Boston to launch a number of consumer products. His new charge is to work with an enthusiastic group of citizens to figure out how to create a vibrant innovation ecosystem in Robeson County, just a few miles from the South Carolina border. Pembroke's team is joining with similar communities as a part of InnovateNC, an initiative that grew out of IEI's 2015 Emerging Issues Forum, Innovation Reconstructed. Their goal is to, in part, assess their assets and try to build on - not abandon - them. This week, we talk to Thomas Hall in the Thomas Center's 20,000 sq. ft. incubator about "coop-itition," the county's first makerspace, and how entrepreneurial success can transform this small community.

Jim Johnson at the Kenan-Flagler Business School likes to describe North Carolina's future this way: "Going forward," he says, "our state will be grayer and browner." Like the rest of the country, North Carolinians are, on average, getting older, grayer. In the next 30 years, there will be another million people in the state 65 years or older, beyond the years people say are most productive. The people coming into the workforce, Johnson says, will be browner. Sometime during the mid-2020s, North Carolina high schools will graduate their first majority-minority class. Right now, our state doesn't do nearly as good a job educating African-Americans, Latinos and Native Americans, or students from low-income backgrounds. Each of these groups is less likely to graduate from high school; less likely to graduate from college; and will, on average, make less money. If older people are going to retire, we need every smart person we can find graduating, ready to think faster, create more and help to invent our future. This week's guest is working on a solution for one of those groups, young African-Americans. Atrayus Goode, an alum of 100 Black Men of America, founded Movement of Youth, a multi-state group designed to help connect young African-Americans with role models who inspire them to set high goals and dream big dreams. Goode talks with us about leading productive conversations on race, the Service Year NC initiative, and raising kids to be strong, independent leaders.

As North Carolina looks to our future, there are two types of innovation we're going to need: business innovation and social innovation. UNC Wilmington's Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship innately understands the value of both and strives to nurture emerging companies committed to innovation. This week, we talk with David Morrison, UNCW CIE Nonprofit Advisor in Residence, who leads the Center's nonprofit wing and works one-on-one with individuals to launch nonprofit initiatives. In David, UNCW CIE got someone who has a strong track record starting and sustaining a social enterprise. They also found someone who is a fierce advocate for the rights of the left behind. Morrison shares his story, discusses the value of innovation, and reaffirms his commitment to accessibility for the estimated 236,700 working adults with disabilities across North Carolina.

These days, we're inundated by what the North Carolina Office of Science, Technology and Innovation call a "data tsunami." Here's a mind-blowing number from their recently released report: We have collected more data about ourselves and our world in the past two years than we have collected in all of human history. Given that data - and its influence on our lives - isn't going away, we need to find a way to do more with it. This week, we sit down with John Hardin, Executive Director of the Office of Science, Technology and Innovation, to tease out some of the ways we could use data to help us be "first in future." We also unmask John's favorite superhero - an amalgam of all the core strengths embodied by forward-thinking North Carolinians.

What does one do after leaving the job of top salesperson for an entire state? For Sharon Decker, that doesn’t mean retirement. After serving as Secretary of Commerce under Gov. Pat McCrory, Decker moved back to rural North Carolina, where she is helping build a business and rebuild a region’s hopes and dreams. As COO of the Tryon International Equestrian Center, Decker is building a dream that could someday be comparable to golf, or to NASCAR. This week, Decker discusses her career change and shares her book recommendations, and we get the first answer on this podcast to the age-old question, If you were a horse, what kind would you be?

One of the signs of a vibrant economy is one in which there’s a constant churn of “creative destruction”: A mix of one group of companies going out of business being replaced by new companies. Statewide, there’s a patchwork of incubators to nurture these new companies; these shared spaces bring together a variety of young firms into a common space to help fledgling companies share costs and benefit from the energy that comes from being around other startups. This week, we’re joined by Sean Ahlum, director at one such incubator, tekMountain in Wilmington, to talk about Wilmington, surfing, breweries, utility infielders, equity crowdfunding and innovation ecosystems.

At IEI, we're committed to North Carolina's future, dedicating our time, talent and energy to identify and address the state's most pressing issues. We start to determine the issues we work on by listening, by giving the problem a name; then, we frame the issue through research and collaboration. If we do our work right, good things happen, and the state and its people make some progress. This week, we sit down with Donnie Charleston, IEI Economic Policy Manager, to talk about finding common ground, talent development and why a generation of Batmans would benefit us all.

In North Carolina, a remarkable coalition of organizations has gathered to distill the best ideas from across the early childhood community to help shape our state’s future. This week, we're joined by Tracy Zimmerman, executive director of the North Carolina Early Childhood Foundation, to talk about the importance of collaboration in investing in early years, the draw of North Carolina, and the strongest - and most flawed - superhero out there.

Bishop Hope Morgan Ward, UMC by Institute for Emerging Issues