This column, written by LVEDC President & CEO Don Cunningham, originally appeared in The Morning Call and on the newspaper’s website on Aug. 25, 2023.
Many years ago, I stopped watching the television game show “Jeopardy” because it made me feel stupid. 
Not knowing answers isn’t fun. How could someone hit the buzzer before Alex Trebek finished saying, “this walled city established in the 1500s is the capital of Malta.”
“What is Valletta, Alex.”
Are you kidding me? Please turn on Seinfeld.
I once launched a Rubik’s Cube against a concrete basement wall back in the early 1980s after running short on brain power. Watching it explode was fun. Solving it wasn’t. Puzzles and games have never been my thing.
My wife, Lynn, will sit for hours playing them on her phone – sometimes while watching “Jeopardy.” I’d rather spend the evening prepping for a colonoscopy.
If a puzzle is turned into a sport or team challenge that’s different. I’m in. The office staff and I have done scavenger hunts as a team-building exercise. Once a small group of us took on an Escape Room, where a team works together to solve a series of puzzles to exit the room. Spoiler alert: they let you out even if you don’t solve all the puzzles. But, be warned, if you don’t solve the puzzle your collective self-esteem will be where it is after binge watching three-hours of “Jeopardy.”
“In 1735 Dr. Claudius Amyand performed the first successful – ‘what is an appendectomy, Alex’ – surgery of this type.”
Agggghhhhhh! Where do they find these people?
This summer I found myself at the center of an Escape Room-Rubik’s Cube-Jeopardy challenge. In mid-May, the federal government – specifically, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration – released a notice to fund 20 U.S. regions with the best proposal to be an innovation and technology hub. It’s part of the federal CHIPS Act designed to restore America’s competitiveness in semiconductor production and to spur innovation and development of a myriad of other technology sectors.
The challenge is as specific as it is aspirational. Winning regions must advance U.S. global competitiveness in a technology sector where knowledge and operations already exist but could greatly expand during the next decade while creating opportunity for the disadvantaged and improving training and education.
The application required a very specific and broad-based coalition – and had to be filed by Aug. 15. The carrot at the end of the stick: up to $75 million in funding. Summer vacations got pushed back to Labor Day. There were 75 days to put it together by the time we got started.
U.S. Congresswoman Susan Wild of the Lehigh Valley and Carbon County got us started. She was well aware of the initiative. She worked on creating it. The first day a handful of us gathered in her office. There was Wayne Barz of Ben Franklin Technology Partners, Provost Nathan Urban of Lehigh University, Mariska Van Aalst of Rep. Wild’s Office, and Fadia Halma, representing PA Department of Community and Economic Development Sec. Rick Siger, along with other staff members.
We had to assemble the ultimate Escape Room team and do it fast. I was elected team captain by default since they figured it was my job to do this stuff. I tried to get out of it. It didn’t work.
Wayne Barz and I mined our contact lists to assemble every tech-based and advanced manufacturing leader we could in two weeks, along with many other needed stakeholders. George Lewis in my office became Mr. Tech Hub.
My first email went to 55 people. I was hoping half would respond. I forgot this was the Lehigh Valley where people you’ve never met rally around a clear cause to advance the greater good. We heard back from all but a few.
Within weeks, the semiconductor industry that many thought had withered away after Agere and LSI disappeared a decade ago came forward in force. Intel, Broadcom, Evonik, Coherent, Infinera and EMD Electronics, along with new companies such as iDEAL Semiconductor and the Murray Hill Investment Group.
Some are legacy companies such as Intel and Broadcom from the days of Bell Labs and Western Electric when the Lehigh Valley was the nation’s first Silicon Valley making transistors on Union Boulevard. They remain dominant U.S. players in the wireless and telecom world with a significant presence here.
Many of our new companies work in power semiconductors, driving efficient electrification for electric vehicles, data centers and other new products and technologies. In all, the semiconductor sector here has about 1,500 jobs at about 30 companies.
New met old. Legacy met startup. Universities partnered with community colleges. State and local elected officials worked with federal officials, while labor unions and workforce organizations shared strategies with school districts and a myriad of social support agencies.
There were competing ideas and strategies. It often felt like a Rubik’s Cube where the blue cubes just wouldn’t fall in place. But during the heat and humidity of this summer, all these people showed up, engaged, and developed a plan for the Lehigh Valley to increase America’s global competitiveness and, as one Intel executive said to the group, reclaim “the Lehigh Valley’s birthright.”
We found the right people for the Escape Room.
The group not only found its way out – whether we get designated or not – we’ve already won. Nothing but good – and likely some new projects – will come from it.
I think I’ll go watch an episode of “Jeopardy.”
Don Cunningham is the president and CEO of the Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corp.