Changes and a Pearl Metaphor for Rebuilding the Economy after Covid-19

West Coast –> East Coast

While alluding to big changes in a post from December 2018, I never explained–partly because nearly everything was in flux.

Now that the dust has settled, I am a tenured full Professor at George Mason University, Antonin Scalia Law School. Beyond that, I took on the role of Executive Director of the Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property, a Center I had already been affiliated with from nearly its inception.

As part of my mandate to expand innovation and entrepreneurship law programs at Mason/Scalia, I also launched the Innovation Law Clinic last fall. I am also serving as the Law School’s representative on University committees creating the new Institute for Digital InnovAtion (IDIA) and a brand new, mixed-use building on the Arlington Campus (where the Law School is located) that will house IDIA, the Clinic, an outpost of the Mason Office of Technology Transfer, incubator space, and private developer commercial spaces enhancing the Campus as the hub of the Arlington Innovation District.

While all of these things–including my move from Seattle to the East Coast–were in the works before Amazon announced Arlington/Crystal City as the location for HQ2, that development has certainly turbocharged innovation district plans. Further, these efforts are aimed not just at Arlington, or even Northern Virginia (NoVa) and its Rosslyn-Ballston-Dulles tech corridor, but all of the DC, Maryland, and Virginia metro area (the “DMV”).

Re-opening the economy will be like rebuilding a pearl, layer by layer

We all now realize that re-opening the economy may be harder than locking it down. In this op-ed for The Hill, I use a theme I had been pondering for a decade or so about how civilizations break down and fail to re-start. When a major disruption occurs, it effectively cracks a complex system of essential interactions that necessarily developed layer by layer, with each making the next possible. Thus, just like a broken pearl, the economy, or even entire civilization, cannot be simply put back together. Instead the layers have to be rebuilt in sequence. We can speed up the process to some degree, but we cannot bypass the essential layers.

Avoiding another Great Depression through a developmentally layered reopening of the economy

I also gave an interview on this op-ed to WBAL AM-FM: