INTEGRIT-E Conference Seeks Equity in the Delta
An effort aligned with the Delta Regional Authority to help solve the innovation equity challenges.
The University of Memphis Division of Research & Innovation held its inaugural INTEGRIT-E ("integrity") conference in Memphis on June 1-2, 2023. The INTEGRIT-E Regional Partners Convening brought together collaborators from across the Delta region who worked together to submit to the NSF regional innovation engine. The vision of INTEGRIT-E is to help solve the innovation equity challenge in the U.S. by leveraging established data-driven discovery research expertise and industry partnership to create an innovation-based business with livable wages, jobs, and pathways to community wealth. The University of Memphis' research strengths in areas like educational technologies, artificial intelligence, sensing technologies, signal processing, and data science helped to crystalize the industry intersections of this important topic.
The INTERGRIT-E goals include leveraging capacity for transformational change by building research and industry collaborations, forming communities and teams for future grant applications, and strengthening connections between regional institutions. Participants across the region (AR, MS, and TN) attend this event. With 70+ participants, feedback has been great. The participants were also impressed with the keynote speaker Dr. James H. Johnson Jr., a distinguished professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship and Director Urban Investment Strategies Center University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Johnson’s keynote addressed “Demographic Trends.” Johnson explained his research, including community and economic development, effects of demographic changes on the U.S. workplace, interethnic minority conflict in advanced industrial societies, poverty and public policy in urban America, and workforce diversity issues. He discussed implications for the INTEGRIT-E Region. Key points included talent acquisition and retention, rebranding the region, place-based investment strategy, mission-driven approach to entrepreneurship, inclusive supply change management system, equitable development fund, impact investing training, and collective regional ambition.
Johnson also outlined critical drivers for change, which include 1) moving and grooving, 2) browning and graying, and 3) disappearing and rebalancing. The data shared included population loss and inclusive and equitable growth that generates shared prosperity.
“Adopting and successfully implementing recommendations allows the INTEGRIT-E Region to nurture existing and attract new entrepreneurial talent,” according to Johnson.
He also shared research data providing equitable opportunities in mission-driven innovation that address and solve pressing local problems and make the region more inclusive to live, work, play, and do business.
The participants know the Mississippi Delta is an economically distressed region spanning. Johnson presented the results of an analysis of how the geo-demographics of the INTEGRITE-E region have changed over the past twenty years. For two interrelated reasons, human capital challenges and creative and innovative ideas that drive economic development.
Johnson stated, “Leaders across the INTEGRIT-E Region’s multiple jurisdictions must not only understand current and future demographic and workforce challenges but diving and sustaining regional competitiveness, they must be prepared to engage collaboratively in the framing and disciplined execution of a mutually agreed upon strategy.”
The strategy includes a demographically aligned talent acquisition, development, and retention strategy. Implementing successful recommendations allows the INTERGRIT-E Region to new entrepreneurial talent and create equitable opportunities to leverage their entrepreneurial desires and acumen through mission-driven innovation.
Johnson shared vital takeaways that include managing the simultaneous browning and “gray” of America, lobbying for immigration reform, implementing family-friendly business policies, attacking the childcare crisis, aggressively addressing deaths of despair, creating HR policies for encore careers, and practicing empathy and compassion.
To learn more about INTEGRIT-E, contact Dr. Cody Behles, Director of Research Development, at cbehles@memphis.edu or (901) 678-2648.