Education aside, what will drive innovation in Minnesota?

Dan Carr knows how to throw a good conference, and on Friday morning The Collaborative held a panel discussion over breakfast on the state of innovation in Minnesota and the country.

Lynn Casey, CEO of PadillaCRT, moderated, and the panelists were:

The discussion landed on education as the key driver for the Minnesota economy. Rolnick pointed out that Minnesota started to outperform the nation in the late 1950s when the state began to pour money into education, and Pawlenty said Minnesota cannot be complacent about educaiton.

The discussion was far-ranging -- touching on medical device regulation, taxation, banking reform and immigration -- but education (which Rolnick famously has championed for decades) dominated the last 30 minutes or so.

Then Casey asked for each of the panelists to close out with one recommendation that would help the state innovate more and grow its economy faster.

"I need you to choose one, and it can't be education," she said. "If you were to pull one lever, and it could be pulled successfully in order to change the trajectory even better than we have it in terms of successful innovation…what would it be?"

Here are the answers.

McNerney: "It would be the regulatory environment. It needs to be clearer, more transparent and more predictable. There's a little bit of progress in that direction but we have a long way to go."

Baker: "Leadership. I think we have caught ourselves in a trap both in the state and country broadly – we're not on a pro-growth agenda, we're not on a come together, let's get it done, identify the issue agenda. We are in a divide agenda. And as a result I think we are weakening ourselves, not strengthening ourselves, and we're weakening our ability to get after the things we need to get after."