A Merger May Boost the Prospects for More Robotics
Copyright 2004 P.G. Publishing Co.
They’re not exactly household names, unless you live in a household where robotics development and digital technology make for light dinner conversation. But the Pittsburgh Digital Greenhouse and the Robotics Foundry are merging Jan. 1, and the region will be better for it.
The new agency, called the Technology Collaborative, will be the marriage of two efforts, not parallel but complementary, to spin jobs, business and products from Pittsburgh’s high-tech brainpower. Although much of that intelligence is based at the universities—Carnegie Mellon, Pitt and Penn State—it has been a challenge for economic development types to take it to the next level by helping to launch private, profit-making firms eager to run with a new idea.
The Robotics Foundry and the Digital Greenhouse have been doing that independently—the former primarily with federal dollars in the field of unmanned military vehicles and devices, the latter largely with state and private dollars to get small tech companies off the ground. In their blended form, the two units hope to pool their resources and their programs for a greater impact in the Pittsburgh region.
Although the jobs created in the tech arena don’t sprout by the hundreds (dozens are more like it), they are quality jobs with the potential for more. In 2002, the average annual wage of workers in the Pittsburgh Digital Greenhouse cluster was $70,471, compared to the $35,625 average for workers in the Pittsburgh region.
In five years of activity, the Digital Greenhouse generated a total of 1,004 jobs. Over time and through the ups and downs of the tech market, some were lost, reducing the net gain to 305. That may signify only modest growth, but at least Pittsburgh has been spared the comparatively heavy losses of thousands of jobs and hundreds of firms endured by other communities after the dot.com collapse.
With cyber security and military applications only two of the growth areas for the kinds of work supported by the Technology Collaborative, we have to like its chances in the new, merged state. It’s one more way that Pittsburgh will benefit from top-flight work at its universities.
Copyright 2004 P.G. Publishing Co.
Copyright © 2002 LexisNexis, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc.
