Building a More Competitive Mississippi  – Ole Miss News

OXFORD, Miss. – Mississippi has the components it must thrive in a high-tech economic system, however the state’s leaders should embrace expertise to make sure success, enterprise and coverage leaders agreed Tuesday (Nov. 8) on the College of Mississippi. 

Greater than 60 leaders gathered at Ole Miss for the second annual Mississippi Competes Imaginative and prescient Session, a convention that goals to bolster the state’s financial competitiveness.

“The economic system of yesterday will not be the economic system of tomorrow,” mentioned Invoice Prepare dinner, enterprise accomplice at Columbia Capital and president of Prepare dinner Consulting LLC. “This session is a discussion board that target embracing new and rising applied sciences and studying how one can create a vibrant ecosystem that may advance the state’s economic system. ” 

Prepare dinner pioneered the convention in 2021 as a approach to showcase alternatives for development and to deliver the heads of presidency, schooling and business into one area.

Among the many 10 panelists Tuesday had been digital infrastructure business executives, profitable entrepreneurs, protection contractors and leaders in autonomous transportation. Company additionally included U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker, Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson, state Rep. Clay Deweese and state Sen. Nicole Boyd.

The panels targeted on how one can create an ecosystem of accessibility and success for startup corporations and entrepreneurs and the significance of autonomous transportation, each by land and by sea. Creating this ecosystem begins with coverage surrounding the problems and continues with native and regional buy-in, panelists mentioned.

The purpose of the session was not simply to speak about alternatives, however to expose members to new expertise traits and progressive ideas based mostly on panelists’ experiences, and provides attendees particular assignments to create alternatives for Mississippi, Prepare dinner mentioned. 

“We, Mississippi, can do higher,” he mentioned. “One financial improvement win doesn’t resolve our drawback. We should compete as if we’re going to win all of them.” 

U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker talks to members on the Mississippi Competes Imaginative and prescient Session about how the state can profit from the push to compete globally in semiconductor chip manufacturing and analysis. Photograph by Kevin Bain/Ole Miss Digital Imaging Providers

“How can we compete? We create new concepts, superior coverage; we spend money on folks, infrastructure and tech. What occurs if we compete? We study, we develop, we prosper and we win.”

The college is working to assist develop the workforce and expertise wanted to capitalize, UM Chancellor Glenn Boyce mentioned. 

“That is what a flagship college ought to do, and it’s what we’re doing right now,” he mentioned. 

Panelists mentioned the state is uniquely poised for alternative, being between two main web and autonomous car hubs – Dallas and Atlanta – and having important fiber optic communications infrastructure all through the state. Panelist Sean Baillie, digital infrastructure government, mentioned that success on this planet of information infrastructure requires 4 issues: “land, energy, water and fiber.”

Mississippi has these belongings, panelists agreed. It simply wants somebody to behave. 

All through the panel, Prepare dinner typically redirected focus to how the college can put together college students for getting into the “economic system of tomorrow” by offering hands-on coaching in robotics and by partnering with information heart industries and cloud corporations, each of which, audio system mentioned, are experiencing exponential development.

Boyce highlighted the college’s latest development, together with a 5.1% total enrollment enhance over 2021 and the college reaching an all-time excessive retention fee of 89.3%. Boyce lauded pupil achievements, such because the latest naming of two Truman Students, six Fulbright Students and three Goldwater Students.

“Why do I inform you all this?” he mentioned. “As a result of we’re constructing a labor pressure and I would like you to grasp the standard of the labor pressure popping out of this college.” 

Wicker, visiting on election day, touted the bipartisan passing of the CHIPS and Science Act in July, a invoice that devotes $200 billion towards the manufacturing of semiconductor chips in america. America is lagging behind Asian international locations within the manufacture of the chips, that are important within the creation of automobiles, cellphones, medical tools and lots of different computerized capabilities, he mentioned.

This invoice shall be a place to begin for america to excel in chip expertise, and Mississippi gained’t be left behind in that effort, Wicker mentioned.

“We’re about to dwell the dream,” he mentioned. “That is the second, my fellow Mississippians, for us to be the chief in expertise. You’re going to provide us some concepts right now. We imply to show them into motion.”