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Plenary Remarks by Mark Parr March 24, 2001
It is a pleasure to be here and my thanks to Neocles Leontis, George Bullerjahn, and Mike Boyle for putting this event together and for involving the Regional Technology Alliance. So we usher in the hopeful beginnings of a new academic research Center -- the Center for Bimolecular Science. So what is a center? The dictionary defines it among other things as a place of action, of force, and of impact. These are the drivers of change. So we both honor and challenge this new center to be such a driver. Nobel Laureate economist Douglas North has written about what he calls adaptive efficiency, which is the ability of institutions and communities to innovate, continuously learn, and productively change. To me this event, Tripartisanship for Technology, is a powerful symbol that represents this ability. It is a remarkable effort in the knowledge and wealth building exercise of sharing information, turning it into knowledge, and thus building the future. Whether you are from business, government, or academia, you are now being asked to utilize the best of each otherís skills in order to maintain competitive advantage in our respective endeavors. Our institutions must cooperate to maintain quality of life. For increasingly this advantage, and our great quality of life, is less and less dependent on natural resources and transportation, and more and more related to information and knowledge. So we must consider this triad to be a powerful step as we work together toward building a regional the knowledge base. And if you examine our collective resources, with more organizational efforts like this we can and will compete on a global scale. And individually, we will contribute mightily to local and universal quality of life. So
my thanks and once again it is an honor to be included as we spend this
day mining for knowledge and defining our best opportunities for the future
of our region.
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March 2001 / dmartin@bgnet.bgsu.edu / Disclaimer |