Ask most university leaders how their institution contributes to the regional economy and the answer is likely to include research expenditures, patents, startups, and jobs. Those measures remain important, but they overlook one of the university's most valuable contributions. In today’s economy, where innovation, talent, and technology shape how regions grow, universities are helping communities adapt, connect, and compete.
That change reflects a bigger shift in economic development. For a long time, the goal was to recruit the next major employer or land a large manufacturing project. Those wins are still important and occupy an outsized share of state economic development investments, but they are not enough by themselves to sustain a vibrant economy. Regions also need strong innovation ecosystems: networks of universities, entrepreneurs, companies, investors, workforce groups, government agencies, and community partners working toward shared goals. Increasingly, a region's competitiveness depends on how well those organizations work together.
Federal programs such as the National Science Foundation’s Regional Innovation Engines, the Economic Development Administration’s Build Back Better Regional Challenge and the Tech Hubs program are built around regional collaboration. They reward coalitions that can show real coordination, complementary strengths, and a long-term plan for growth. In that kind of environment, success is not just about having one strong university or one strong company. It depends on whether the whole region can work together.
For universities, this creates both an opportunity and a challenge. Colleges and universities have always contributed to economic development through research, technology transfer, and workforce preparation. But their most important role may now be something more practical: bringing people together who might not otherwise find each other, trust each other, or work together effectively.
Universities are well suited for that role because they stay rooted in place, anchoring a stready flow of people, knowledge, and ideas. Companies may relocate. Political administrations change. Grant-funded initiatives eventually end. Universities remain. Their long-term presence gives them a unique ability to educate talent, generate knowledge, convene partners, and provide continuity for long-term strategies as regional economies evolve.
We can see this happening across the country. Heartland BioWorks brings universities, industry, workforce organizations, and economic development partners together to strengthen Indiana’s biotechnology sector. Tulsa’s Hub for Equitable and Trustworthy Autonomy takes a similar approach focused on autonomous systems. These are just two examples showing that regional innovation is not just about having great science. It is also about having institutions that can keep people organized, focused, and at the table over time.
One way to think about universities is not simply as regional stakeholders, but as regional infrastructure. Infrastructure makes economic activity possible. Highways connect markets. Broadband connects information. Airports connect people and commerce. Universities provide a similar foundation for talent, research, entrepreneurship, problem solving, and civic leadership. They do more than educate students or conduct research. They help regions respond to disruption, build emerging industries, and create more durable paths to prosperity.
To play that role, universities must constantly focus on being as easy to work with as possible. Anyone who has tried to partner with a large university knows the challenge. A company looking for assistance may not know where to start. A community organization may be passed from office to office before finding the right person. A “no wrong front door” approach can make a big difference by giving businesses, entrepreneurs, and community partners a clear way into the university. Internal complexity should not become an external barrier.
Universities can also learn from one of their oldest models of public engagement: Cooperative Extension. Extension has worked effectively for more than a century because it starts with community problems, not institutional priorities. Extension agents build trust, listen to local needs, and translate university knowledge into practical advice. That same grounded, personalized mindset matters today as regions deal with workforce shortages, industrial change, artificial intelligence, and entrepreneurship challenges.
Artificial intelligence will likely make the human aspect of engagement even more important. Universities will still educate traditional students, but they will also need to enable workers to keep building new skills throughout their careers. Lifelong learning, rapid reskilling, AI adoption by small businesses, and support for entrepreneurship are central to regional competitiveness.
AI could also make university expertise much easier to discover. Rather than expecting companies to navigate complex university structures, AI-enabled discovery platforms can help businesses identify relevant faculty expertise, patents, laboratories, and specialized equipment. Tennessee’s Innovation Exchange, or TNIX, is one example: it lets businesses search university capabilities and share technical challenges with researchers across the state.
This also means universities need a better way to tell their economic development story. Rankings, research spending, and patent counts are useful, but they do not always connect with community leaders or business executives. The stronger story is one where the hero is the entrepreneur who launched a company, the manufacturer that adopted a new technology, the farmer who improved productivity, or the worker who gained skills for an emerging industry. In those stories, the university is the partner helping solve a real problem.
University leaders may start by considering their answers to a few simple questions. Are we bringing the right partners together around regional priorities? Can businesses easily find the expertise they need? Are we treating lifelong learning as a central part of our mission? Are community engagement and knowledge translation seen as strategic assets? And maybe most importantly, is the region actually better off because the university is there?
Universities will always create knowledge. Their greater responsibility, however, is ensuring that knowledge improves people's lives. The most successful universities of the next generation will not simply participate in regional innovation ecosystems. They will help design, build, and sustain them.