IP / Regulatory Law Watch Innovation Deserts By: Professor Shubba Ghosh “An innovation desert refers to the innovation ecosystem that is undeveloped or underdeveloped. Innovation deserts are easy to identify simply by the absence of thriving startups” and resources supportive of innovation. The Innovation Atlas, compiled and curated by The Henry Ford in Detroit, Michigan, provides data on innovation deserts. The Atlas represents 3141 counties in the United States, which are ranked from “Most Barriers to Innovate” to “Least Barriers to Innovate.” Barriers to Innovate are gauged by 34 socio-economic and educational variables including: race/ethnicity of students; percentage of children below the poverty line; percentage of community who had completed high school; percentage of households with computers or access to Internet; percentage of community that had completed some college; percentage of renters. The Innovation Atlas aggregates the socio-economic and educational variables into a metric called “Barriers to Innovate” which is a five-point score that ranges from “Least Barriers” to “Most Barriers.” The ranking is calibrated so that the 3141 counties are evenly divided from Most Barriers to Least Barriers, roughly 628 counties in each rank. This categorization established a baseline for more finely calibrating the presence of specific variables on the barriers to innovate facing each county. In the next section, I will look specifically at the presence of 2-year colleges, less than 2-year colleges, and community colleges on the ranking of counties by barriers to innovate. I focus on these three sets of post-secondary education, collectively referred to as “adult education,” because they have been largely overlooked in the literature about sources of innovation. Adult education includes a range of potential innovators and entrepreneurs, not only students and teachers, but also veterans, second-career working adults, and adults pursuing retraining or an initial post—secondary degree. As potential innovators or entrepreneurs, adult learners have many of the characteristics associated with an aged workforce, such as reducing turnover through commitment to work, meeting the expectations of consumers, and complementing diversity initiatives. For these reasons and others I present below, adult learners are an important group to understand in more fully developing innovation policy. | 
