The Smartest Places on Earth

Have you ever looked at an abandoned factory or a struggling city and wondered, “Could this place ever come back to life?” In The Smartest Places on Earth, Antoine van Agtmael and Fred Bakker make an audacious claim: the world’s former rustbelts—once icons of industrial decline—are becoming the new global centers of innovation. According to the authors, the economic advantage that once belonged to cheap-labor markets in Asia and emerging economies is fading. What’s taking its place is a new paradigm of smart innovation powered by collaboration, knowledge sharing, and advanced manufacturing. In this world, the competition isn’t about cost—it’s about creativity.

Van Agtmael coined the term “emerging markets” decades ago, but here he argues the future belongs to what he and Bakker call “brainbelts.” These are regions that reinvent themselves by merging advanced R&D, high-skill industries, and public-private collaboration into dynamic ecosystems. Brainbelts thrive on what the authors term “sharing brainpower”—the collective process through which universities, startups, corporations, and local governments unite their expertise to tackle complex, interdisciplinary challenges, from smart materials to medical devices. They are the modern descendants of the industrial cities that once built steel and cars, now retooled to produce microchips, biomechanical implants, and nanotechnology breakthroughs.

The End of “Cheap Beats Smart”

The authors begin with a startling observation: executives from Asian tech powerhouses like Mediatek now worry about rising American and European competition. The reason, they say, is that Western regions have rediscovered something Asia can’t replicate cheaply—creativity fueled by collaboration. Cheap labor once powered globalization’s engine, but as technology automates production and knowledge becomes the key differentiator, that model collapses. The future no longer belongs to those who make products cheaper—it belongs to those who make them smarter.

In this new global map, emerging centers of innovation appear in the most unexpected places: Akron, Ohio; Albany, New York; Eindhoven, the Netherlands; Dresden, Germany; and Oulu, Finland. What do these cities have in common? Each was once a symbol of industrial decline—steel mills, shipyards, tire plants—but each reinvented itself by investing in research, linking universities with business, and fostering communities where collaboration replaced competition. By doing so, they built ecosystems capable of generating smart, world-leading innovation.

The DNA of a Brainbelt

A brainbelt, van Agtmael and Bakker emphasize, is not just an industrial park or innovation cluster—it’s a living ecosystem. These regions share common features: strong academic anchors such as universities or technical institutes, large corporations willing to collaborate with startups, a thriving community of entrepreneurs, and public-sector leaders who act as facilitators rather than bureaucrats. Each has a central figure—the connector—who acts as the catalyst bringing coaches, scientists, entrepreneurs, and civic leaders into alignment. Think of Akron’s University president Luis Proenza, Albany’s Alain Kaloyeros, or Eindhoven’s Gerard Kleisterlee of Philips. Without such human catalysts, even the most advanced technology infrastructure remains inert.

The authors show that brainbelts depend on focus, openness, and trust. Focus means the ecosystem zeroes in on a few specialties, such as semiconductors in Dresden or polymers in Akron. Openness means businesses and universities share intellectual resources, confident their overlapping interests create mutual strength rather than threats. Trust emerges over time through collaboration and shared victories. When these three elements combine, innovation flourishes and regions once synonymous with decay become engines of the global economy again.

From Brainpower to Smart Manufacturing

Sharing brainpower, the authors argue, is only half the story. The other half is the rebirth of smart manufacturing—a new kind of production fueled by robotics, 3D printing, and the Internet of Things. Smart factories don’t churn out mass products cheaply; they make specialized, high-value goods with almost zero waste. They’re clean, compact, and deeply integrated with data analytics. In smart factories, machines communicate directly through sensors and software, diagnosing issues before failure and adjusting in real time. These factories can even sit in city centers, turning once-polluted zones into high-tech hubs of innovation and employment. As GE’s advanced jet engine plant in Mississippi or Siemens’s precision facility in Germany shows, automation doesn’t kill manufacturing—it transforms it.

When coupled with human creativity, robotics and artificial intelligence become powerful enablers rather than threats. The authors contend that automation, if integrated with education and community development, can actually create jobs in new industries while elevating skill levels. “Smart” replaces “cheap” not only as an economic model but also as a cultural one: work becomes about mastery, learning, and local pride again.

Why It Matters to You

The story van Agtmael and Bakker tell isn’t just about economics—it’s about possibility. It challenges the fatalistic notion that globalization inevitably drains Western economies of their strength. Instead, they show how old industrial centers can reinvent themselves around knowledge and cooperation. For you—whether you’re an entrepreneur, policymaker, educator, or community leader—the lesson is that innovation isn’t the privilege of tech giants or big cities. With collaboration, local assets, and visionary leadership, even the most overlooked city can become a hub of smart growth. As the authors put it, “Welcome to the brainbelt.”

The central mechanism behind the rise of brainbelts is simple yet radical: sharing brainpower. In traditional industrial or research models, corporations, governments, and universities worked in isolation. Knowledge was a guarded asset, protected by patents and secrecy. But in the new innovation economy, that mindset kills creativity. Van Agtmael and Bakker argue that true progress happens when these walls collapse and collaboration replaces competition.

Academic-Industrial Partnerships

Universities play a new role as active partners in economic development—not ivory towers but engines of industry. Take the example of the University of Akron. Once a sleepy regional campus, under the leadership of Luis Proenza it became the “Polymer Valley” engine, linking scientists, manufacturers, and entrepreneurs. Akron had decades of rubber expertise from companies like Goodyear but had lost production to Asia. Instead of clinging to the past, Proenza engaged researchers, state officials, and private firms to turn that legacy into a twenty-first-century specialization in polymer science. The result: hundreds of new companies, tens of thousands of jobs, and a world-class research hub for materials science.

(Similarly, at the SUNY Poly NanoTech Complex in Albany, a collaboration between the State University of New York, IBM, and semiconductor leaders like Intel and Samsung birthed an entire ecosystem around nanotechnology and chip fabrication. The state government provided infrastructure and incentives, while scientists contributed cutting-edge research and corporations invested billions in applied engineering.)

Trust and Openness as Economic Drivers

At the heart of these examples is trust. Companies that once competed ferociously in secrecy, such as Philips and ASML in the Netherlands or Infineon and GlobalFoundries in Germany, now engage in open innovation. As one Dresden entrepreneur explains, trust allows “politicians, scientists, and entrepreneurs to know how to find each other.” Sharing labs, data, or even intellectual property becomes a strategic strength rather than a weakness because the problems—like developing the next semiconductor or biopharmaceutical—are too complex for any one entity alone.

This collaborative ethos, the authors note, mirrors how scientists already operate in research communities: through peer cooperation and shared credit. In brainbelts, these values extend to business, creating a culture of collective problem-solving that leads to faster prototypes, quicker feedback loops, and richer local economies.

The Connector—Catalyst of Collaboration

Every successful brainbelt, the authors note, has a person—or a small group—who orchestrates this sharing of minds. These connectors are visionaries who unite government, academia, and industry. Alain Kaloyeros, a physicist who led the Albany NanoTech initiative, exemplifies this type. Once a war refugee from Lebanon, Kaloyeros combined scientific mastery with diplomacy, convincing fierce industry rivals to co-locate research labs and share multi-billion-dollar facilities. Similar connectors appear across chapters: Malmö’s governor Nils Hörjel envisioned Sweden’s first science park; Eindhoven’s Gerard Kleisterlee opened Philips’ once-secret NatLab to outside researchers; and in Minneapolis, a web of doctors and entrepreneurs turned medical device invention into a citywide industry.

Resilient Communities Built on Knowledge

When companies, universities, and governments share brainpower, they build more than just products—they build community resilience. In Ohio, start-ups now outnumber the old tire factories. In Dresden, hundreds of high-tech suppliers have emerged around semiconductor firms. These networks become self-reinforcing. Students trained in local programs stay to work in regional industries; profits from successful start-ups feed back into accelerators or venture funds; and public trust grows as citizens see tangible improvements in employment and quality of life.

In short: sharing brainpower turns rustbelt fatalism into creative energy. By aligning human talent across boundaries, brainbelts prove that local collaboration can rival global competition.

One of the most exciting claims in The Smartest Places on Earth is that manufacturing—once written off in the West—is not dying but being reborn. This resurrection is driven by what the authors call smart manufacturing, a system that leverages robotics, sensors, additive manufacturing (3D printing), and the Internet of Things to produce high-quality goods precisely and efficiently. Forget smokestacks and sweatshops; think clean labs where engineers, technicians, and computers collaborate in real time.

Robotics and Automation

Companies like Rethink Robotics symbolize this new age. Their low-cost humanoid robots, Baxter and Sawyer, can work safely alongside humans for as little as $3 an hour. As founder Rodney Brooks notes, these aren’t replacing human creativity—they extend it. Robots learn from demonstration, not programming, allowing small firms to automate tasks previously impossible due to cost. This democratizes automation and erases the labor-cost advantage that once made China or Mexico irresistible. Even Nike, founders Phil Knight explains, envisions shoes built locally by robotic systems tailored perfectly to each customer’s foot.

3D Printing and Customized Production

Additive manufacturing takes customization to new extremes. Instead of cutting or molding, 3D printers build parts layer by layer from digital blueprints. In Youngstown, Ohio, the founders of America Makes turned an empty warehouse into a 3D-printing institute that now experiments with materials ranging from plastics to titanium. Medical labs print bone implants; automotive companies print complex engine components; and labs like Carbon3D—founded by University of North Carolina chemist Joseph DeSimone—can produce commercial-grade parts 100 times faster than previous machines. These methods reduce waste to near zero and bring production closer to the customer, revitalizing local economies.

The Internet of Things and Data Integration

The Internet of Things threads it all together. Machines, products, and sensors communicate continuously, optimizing output and predicting breakdowns before they happen. GE’s Schenectady battery plant and Siemens’s Amberg factory exemplify this “industrial internet.” At Amberg, one defect occurs per million components. Every joint, temperature shift, and vibration is tracked and adjusted via software. As GE economist Marco Annunziata puts it, this is a “marriage between minds and machines.”

The implications are huge. Smart manufacturing creates small, high-value factories that can operate profitably in Western cities, blending art and engineering. They’re environmentally sustainable, resilient, and human-centered. For you, the takeaway is clear: the next industrial revolution isn’t offshore—it’s already back home, humming quietly in labs and workshops where creativity meets code.

Behind every successful brainbelt stands a person—or small network—with both technical credibility and political savvy: the connector. Without them, ideas remain theory. With them, ecosystems thrive.

From Physics to Policy—Alain Kaloyeros

The archetypal connector is Alain Kaloyeros. Recruited by New York’s governor in the 1980s to turn around the struggling State University of New York in Albany, Kaloyeros envisioned an international nanotechnology center that united fierce competitors like IBM, Intel, Nikon, and Samsung under one roof. Using the university as a neutral ground (which made joint research exempt from anti-trust issues), he persuaded them to co-invest billions in shared labs. His Global 450 Consortium became the world’s model for collaborative high-tech research. When visiting SUNY Poly’s NanoTech Complex, even skeptical industry leaders admitted, “All roads to IBM now go through Albany.”

Connectors Across Continents

In Akron, Luis Proenza took on that connector role by fusing the University’s legacy in rubber into a future in polymers. In Sweden’s Lund, Nils Hörjel rallied politicians, scientists, and investors to build Ideon Science Park after local shipyards collapsed. In Finland, professors and Nokia engineers repurposed their wireless expertise into medical device startups after the smartphone decline. These leaders don’t have uniform training—some are academics, others entrepreneurs—but all share an ability to translate vision into action and get unlikely allies to cooperate.

Why Connectors Matter

Connectors bridge worlds that rarely overlap: science and government, technology and community. They are experts in institutional diplomacy. By aligning incentives—academic prestige, corporate profit, and regional pride—they make collaboration profitable for all. This explains why official top-down policies often fail while one passionate leader can awaken a “sleeping beauty” of a region. (Comparable in tone to Malcolm Gladwell’s fascination with social connectors in The Tipping Point.)

In practical terms, the authors encourage readers to act as connectors in their own organizations: identify complementary partners, build trust through small successes, and communicate a shared mission. The real currency of brainbelts, after all, is not capital but connection.

Perhaps nowhere is collaborative innovation more transformative than in life sciences—a field that demands both academic rigor and industrial scale. Van Agtmael and Bakker spotlight how cities like Minneapolis, Portland, Zurich, and Oulu turned medicine into a frontier of brainsharing.

Minneapolis: The Pacemaker Capital

The story begins with a tragedy: in 1958, a power failure in an operating room caused a child’s death during heart surgery. Surgeon C. Walton Lillehei asked local engineer Earl Bakken to invent a battery-powered device. The result—Medtronic’s first portable pacemaker—spawned a global medical-device giant and, eventually, a local ecosystem of 2,500 life-science companies. Collaboration between doctors, regulators, and universities turned Minneapolis into the nerve center of implantable technology.

Portland: Philanthropy Meets Big Data

In Portland, visionary philanthropy fused with technology. Nike founder Phil Knight’s half-billion-dollar challenge grant to the OHSU Knight Cancer Institute catalyzed collaboration among scientists and chip engineers from Intel. Their mission: use big data to map cancer mutations like roadways on Google Maps. As OHSU’s Joe Gray explained, only by linking biology with computational power could they reveal cancer’s pathways. Intel embedded engineers directly in university labs, proving that knowledge sharing between silicon and science can literally save lives.

Zurich and Oulu: European Bio-Brainbelts

ETH Zurich turned Switzerland’s loss of banking dominance into biotech leadership by building Bio-Technopark, an ecosystem uniting startups and giants like Roche and Novartis within walking distance of university labs. In Finland, the collapse of Nokia birthed a wave of health-tech startups. Companies like Optomed transformed wireless expertise into portable retinal scanners for global health care. These examples show how brainbelts redirect existing skills toward new societal needs.

Across all these cases, the pattern is clear: merging “white coats and blue collars”—scientists, engineers, and makers—creates breakthroughs faster than working in silos. The next medical revolution, the authors suggest, will come not from lone geniuses but from coalitions of creativity.

In their sweeping fifth chapter, van Agtmael and Bakker explore how brainsharing extends beyond factories into every aspect of life—energy, transportation, agriculture, and cities. Smart products, born of collaboration, can also solve social and environmental challenges.

Energy and Climate

Smart grids and advanced batteries—like MIT’s 24M Technologies’ ultracheap lithium cells—turn consumers into prosumers who both use and generate energy. The authors describe experiments in Denmark where electric-vehicle owners feed surplus power back to the network, creating decentralized grids. Companies such as GE and Tesla, though competitors, push this idea forward through hybrid innovation and new business models. By connecting brainbelts across borders, sustainable energy becomes both profitable and planetary.

The Self-Driving Nexus

Transportation, they argue, shows brainsharing at work: universities, automakers, and AI pioneers combine to reinvent the car. DARPA’s Grand Challenge spurred partnerships among Stanford, Google, and global automakers like Mercedes and BMW. The result? Today’s autonomous cars blend chips, sensors, and algorithms from dozens of collaborative labs. As one engineer put it, the car of the future is “the ultimate group project.”

Smart Farming and Urban Living

In the Netherlands, universities and agribusinesses collaborate in “greenhouse of the future” experiments, producing more food with less land. Companies like Philips develop LED “light recipes” to optimize plant growth. This model of hyper-efficient, local agriculture shows how brainbelts can nurture sustainability at scale. Similarly, smart cities—from Eindhoven’s repurposed Philips factories to Portland’s innovation districts—blend art, data, and design to make urban life healthier and more connected.

The authors’ message: technology gains its soul when it serves humanity. Brainbelts prove that progress need not be dehumanizing—it can rebalance work, community, and the planet itself.

The book concludes by zooming out: how can any region become one of “the smartest places on earth”? Van Agtmael and Bakker argue that innovation must move from corporate boardrooms to local communities—where policy, education, and culture align to awaken the hidden potential of each place.

Rethinking Policy and Measurement

Governments don’t need grand industrial plans so much as smart frameworks. Initiatives like the U.S. National Additive Manufacturing Institute or Europe’s Horizon 2020 show how modest funding, when structured for collaboration, sparks massive returns. Yet, the authors warn, current GDP metrics ignore the value of innovation ecosystems. Free tools like Google Maps or open research between firms add real productivity but invisible statistics. We need new measures for creativity, cooperation, and social capital to guide twenty-first-century economies.

Education and Skills for a Smart Economy

To sustain brainbelts, education must evolve. Community colleges and dual work-study programs—especially Germany’s “duale Ausbildung”—train workers for advanced manufacturing and technical design. Siemens and GlobalFoundries partner with local schools to align curriculums with industry needs. The authors argue that the real labor crisis isn’t job loss but a training gap: millions of high-tech jobs go unfilled because workers aren’t prepared. Lifelong learning, they say, is the new full employment.

Culture of Collaboration

Finally, innovation is cultural. The West must shed the myth of the lone genius and embrace the connector ethos. As GE’s Jeff Immelt and countless local mayors demonstrate, effective leadership in a brainbelt isn’t about command—it’s about convening. When people from multiple disciplines share a table (and a purpose), the “sleeping beauties” of forgotten towns awaken into centers of shared prosperity.

Ultimately, the authors leave readers with a challenge: wherever you are—factory floor, classroom, or city hall—you can be a connector. The smartest places aren’t born smart. They decide to be.