Daykin, Nebraska (Photo by: Jim West/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

For decades, a relatively small number of places have dominated U.S. innovation. Silicon Valley, New York City, Los Angeles, Boston, Austin, and Seattle together account for roughly 70–75 percent of all U.S. venture capital and have generated extraordinary wealth, breakthrough technologies, and world-changing companies.

These regions remain indispensable to U.S. competitiveness. But if the United States intends to lead the industries that will define the next century, we can no longer rely on a small handful of innovation centers to carry the nation's economic future. This concentration leaves vast reservoirs of talent, industrial capacity, natural resources, research excellence, and entrepreneurial potential on the sidelines across the country.

The challenge of expanding both the geography and demography of innovation sits at the heart of the “Competitiveness Conversations Across America” initiative. Through this series of over a dozen regional summits, the Council on Competitiveness and its members are travelling across the nation to: understand how innovation ecosystems are emerging; identify the strengths that make these ecosystems distinctive; document the best and “next” practices for economic development; and amplify these strengths for greater, positive impact on U.S. productivity and economic growth, national security, and prosperity.

Our most recent stop took us to Omaha, Nebraska. In partnership with the University of Nebraska System and its president, Jeffrey P. Gold, M.D., we have uncovered important lessons for the future of U.S. competitiveness. In particular, we have documented how Nebraska, and America's Heartland more broadly, possesses many of the assets that will determine U.S. leadership in one of the 21st century's most strategically important arenas: the bioeconomy.

How America’s Heartland Supports the Nation’s Bioeconomy

The bioeconomy sits at the convergence of agriculture, biotechnology, advanced manufacturing, energy, health, and computing. This expansive sector, which transforms biological resources such as corn, soybeans, and other feedstocks into fuels, chemicals, materials, medicines, and consumer products, already generates more than $200 billion in direct economic activity in the United States and approaches $4 trillion globally. Projections for the growth of this industry vary – but they are considerable.

As important, the bioeconomy is rapidly becoming a defining arena of competition among nations seeking economic strength, industrial resilience, and supply chain security. China has elevated biotechnology and biomanufacturing as national strategic priorities. Europe is deploying long-term industrial frameworks. Brazil is leveraging its agricultural strengths to build bioindustrial leadership. India is investing aggressively to expand its biotechnology capabilities.

The United States enters this competition with remarkable advantages, and many of those advantages are anchored in Nebraska and the surrounding region. The state alone generates more than $30 billion annually in agricultural output, cultivates more than 21 million acres of cropland, supports world-class grain and livestock production systems, operates 24 ethanol plants, and benefits from an extensive road and rail transportation network. Venture investment has accelerated significantly in recent years, while entrepreneurial activity continues to gain momentum across the state.

We have also learned during the Council’s Nebraska Competitiveness Conversation that one of the state’s greatest advantages is its deeply connected innovation ecosystem. University leaders, entrepreneurs, farmers, investors, corporate executives, and public officials share a common understanding of the opportunities ahead and work across institutional boundaries to pursue them. Leaders know one another, institutions collaborate, and ideas move quickly from conversation to implementation.

The United States Has an Invention and Innovation Advantage – but a Scale-Up and Manufacturing Challenge

Nebraska's story also illuminates one of the United States’ most persistent challenges. While remaining the world's most powerful engine of scientific discovery and technological invention and innovation in the marketplace, too often the country struggles to transform breakthrough research in some sectors into domestic manufacturing, commercial deployment, and durable industrial leadership.

Past technology waves, from flat-panel displays and semiconductors to solar energy, 5G communications, and increasingly pharmaceuticals, reveal a familiar pattern: without the ability to manufacture at scale, scientific leadership erodes into economic dependency. The same risk now confronts the United States in the bioeconomy, while global competitors are moving aggressively to secure leadership.

So, what are the major causes slowing the transition from lab breakthrough to industrial production in the bioeconomy? There are several – but the main culprits include: financing gaps, permitting complexity, infrastructure constraints, and undeveloped markets. In addition, the United States needs to focus on the regulatory and standards frameworks that will provide certainty, and a platform for innovation-driven growth and global market success. Too many promising technologies spend years trapped between proof of concept and on store shelves, if they reach the market at all.

The challenge becomes even more urgent as biology converges with artificial intelligence, advanced computing, and advanced manufacturing. AI is accelerating discovery, reducing development timelines, improving facility design, optimizing supply chains, and expanding what is technically possible across agriculture, health, energy, and materials science. Competitors are working aggressively to master this convergence, and the nations that do so first will shape the next era of industrial leadership.

Fortunately, Nebraska offers a glimpse of what that future could look like. The state's ethanol industry is evolving from simply being a fuel platform to becoming a mulit-dimensional foundation for a range of solutions, including: sustainable aviation fuels, renewable chemicals, carbon management systems, and next-generation biomanufacturing. Nebraska’s advanced agricultural systems provide both feedstocks and real-world testbeds for innovation, while the University of Nebraska System, entrepreneurs, manufacturers, investors, and public leaders are aligning around a shared vision for growth.