This is a guest post by Michael Farber, cofounder and CEO of Breakout, which creates immersive, place-based experiences that connect people, communities and purpose across industries and backgrounds. The next convening happens in Pittsburgh, and Technical.ly is a media partner.
Since 2014, I’ve worked to immerse national leaders across sectors in city-based experiences. This September, Breakout will bring more than 100 leaders to Pittsburgh for our 21st trip, exploring the city alongside the people shaping its innovation economy.
So why Pittsburgh? For us at Breakout, it is simple. The city is grappling with a question that matters to many of our participants in their own communities: How can AI and advanced technology benefit the people who already live there?
And Pittsburgh may be closer to answering that question than most places.
Carnegie Mellon created the world’s first machine learning department. Duolingo grew from a university spinout into a global company. Hazelwood Green is transforming 178 acres of former steel mill land into an innovation district, supported in part by the Richard King Mellon Foundation’s long-term investment in the region, including gifts that helped launch BioForge and the robotics hub there.
Few metropolitan areas of Pittsburgh’s size have the same concentration of university research, philanthropic support and civic infrastructure.
But Pittsburgh’s innovation story cannot be separated from its industrial history.
The region was once a center of American manufacturing, with the Mon Valley home to Carnegie Steel’s Homestead Works. This year, US Steel released an economic impact analysis of its planned capital investment of up to $2.5 billion in Mon Valley Works. The analysis projects $1.7 billion in economic impact for Pennsylvania and as many as 6,381 jobs over three years.
There is something for those of us from other cities to learn from those projections. Pittsburgh knows what happens when an industry changes and the people most affected have little say in what comes next. That history gives today’s debates over technology, economic development and community a weight felt in other post-industrial cities, but perhaps matched only by Detroit.
The city also offers examples of how its research strengths can lead to companies grounded in its industrial economy. Sankalp Arora developed autonomous helicopters as a doctoral student at Carnegie Mellon. Today, he leads Pittsburgh-based Gather AI, which uses autonomous drones to help warehouses track inventory. It is the kind of company Pittsburgh is well positioned to produce: advanced technology developed through university research and applied to a practical problem in logistics and industry.
That connection between research, company-building and the region’s industrial base is part of what we are coming to understand.
About 30 people participating in Breakout Builders already live or work in Pittsburgh. They will be joined by founders, funders, educators, civic leaders and community builders from Baltimore, Detroit, Atlanta, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, New York and other cities.
Visitors will see how universities shape the economy, what helps people stay and build companies, what local foundations and civic groups can support and how community organizations try to influence development. Local participants will also hear how leaders elsewhere are approaching similar questions.
They will see Pittsburgh’s strengths, but also its gaps: limited venture capital from seed through growth, uneven access to the jobs new technology creates and unresolved questions about who benefits from major investment and who gets a say.
And with 21 trips under my belt, it’s crystal clear that most important conversations happen outside the formal agenda. They happen on buses, over meals, on a walk to a city park, and in group chats on the way home. They happen when a founder, funder, educator or neighborhood leader feels comfortable enough to share how the work actually functions: who participates, who benefits, where it falls short, and what still needs to be solved.
Three days in Pittsburgh will not answer every question. But bringing together people facing these challenges in different cities can help us see what is working, what remains disconnected, and who needs to be part of what comes next.