Surplus innovation
There’s already lots of talk about what to do with Arkansas’ billion-dollar surplus. But nobody’s suggested what might be the best use of such a windfall: Fund some disruptive innovation initiatives.
Google made the 70-20-10 rule of innovation famous a decade ago, though the formula originated as a learning and development model in the mid-1990s.
Applied to innovation as a management guideline, the concept is this: Allocate 70 percent of resources to innovatively tweaking proven, low-risk core activities. Then devote 20 percent of resources to exploring adjacent opportunities: markets and capabilities outside the core, but pertinent in planning innovative growth. The final 10 percent is reserved for disruptive innovation—game-changing, blue-sky ideas that are inventive and mold-breaking.
What if we used our surplus to try some wild “what if” concepts? Fund a few things that would never survive the regular, run-of-the-mill budget process. Here’s a short surplus bucket list that could prove truly transformational.
WIN THE WAR ON MOSQUITOES
Life in the agricultural Delta is compromised every summer by harrowing hordes of the biting, blood-sucking insects. If there’s a better environment to breed skeeters than rice fields, mankind hasn’t found it yet.
Many communities expend some effort at “mosquito control,” but most don’t have the money to seriously make a dent against the massed swarms.
What if the surplus set aside a matching fund to fight skeeters? It would need to be enough—maybe 6-to-1 to emphasize the target’s leg count—so as to allow sufficient money for effectiveness.
That could turn a town’s $150,000 mosquito control budget into more than $1 million, and money is all it really takes to get rid of the devils.
Disney mastered the art and science decades ago in the Florida swamp, without relying on pesticides. And with real money in their pockets, small towns could find plenty of innovative Disney-like ways to become mosquito-free using drainage techniques, natural repellents, etc.
Few investments in mosquito-plagued communities could ever produce as much ripple effect for quality of life and economic impact, from increased property values to enhanced outdoor opportunities.
As it is, mosquitoes rule in a lot of places; people just stay inside at night. They’re a universal hindrance and ubiquitous impediment. Remove them, and it’d be like a miracle.
BRING BACK PASSENGER TRAINS
For transit safety and fuel efficiency, nothing beats trains. Toss in the history and romanticism of railway heritage, along with the prevalence of regional hubs supported by surrounding smaller towns that have railroad lines, and there’s hardly a better idea for revolutionizing rural commuter traffic.
The only problem is money, compounded by ridiculously stifling regulatory issues. The transcontinental railroad transformed America, but it never would have happened if every train station in every tiny outpost along the route had been required to meet the same standards as Cornelius Vanderbilt’s Grand Central Depot in New York.
A morning and evening passenger train linking Jonesboro to Walnut Ridge/Hoxie or Marked Tree or Paragould could be invaluable in easing the burden on roadways (and associated bad wrecks). But it will always be prohibitively expensive if rural Arkansas has to conform to inane requirements amounting to insanity in infrastructure costs from wealthy urban areas.
For example, the Long Island Rail Road project in New York cost seven times the global average: $3.5 billion per mile, or to put in properly shocking perspective, $662,878.78 per foot!
What if the surplus funded a 90-10 matching grant—and more importantly, prudent regulatory exemptions—for qualifying commuter locales with the need, the will and the track?
Give the program a New Deal achievement mentality, too: Focus on efficiency and beating budgets and schedules. No need for brand-new train cars and engines; buy the discards from larger cities’ upgrades. No fancy depots; if possible, restore and use the originals.
Commuters are already texting, doing makeup, checking email and heaven knows what else at 65 or 70 mph in their automobiles. A morning and evening train commute would let them better enjoy those distracting activities without creating mortal risk to themselves and others.
FUND RURAL SCHOOL DE-CONSOLIDATION
This is a groundbreaking disruptive innovative idea that could spark national replication. The ill-fated consolidation trend swept over Arkansas with the same false promises as everywhere else, and shuttered too many quality local schools that enjoyed superior parental and community support and served as economic centers in their communities.
The casualties of consolidation have been great: tremendous waste in abandoned real estate assets, near-fatal financial blows in many small towns, arduous bus rides, stagnant or slipping student performance and reduced parental involvement.
On top of all that, research has repeatedly shown that smaller schools out-perform larger ones, especially for lower-income students.
What if the surplus helped willing, committed communities reclaim schools lost to consolidation? Use the money to help balance de-consolidated small school budgets and renovate previously used campuses. Maybe require de-consolidation applicants to raise their millage; places like Weiner volunteered doing that to try and keep their schools.
Community engagement in education is priceless. Investing the state surplus to support and reinvigorate it in consolidated communities would prove to be a disruptively innovative goldmine.