Nicholas Lalla is an urbanist and social entrepreneur who partners with cities to harness innovation for creating good jobs. In 2020, he founded Tulsa Innovation Labs to build northeast Oklahoma’s tech economy from scratch. The organization raised over $200 million and created thousands of tech jobs in Tulsa. This marks the first time in American history that a city dedicated itself in such a concerted way to transforming into a tech hub. He has written for Newsweek, Fast Company, Stanford Social Innovation Review, and Next City, among other outlets.
What’s the big idea?
A bold and pragmatic plan to confront one of society’s defining challenges: harnessing the tech industry to catalyze inclusive growth in places disconnected from today’s innovation economy. Drawing on his personal experience, Lalla establishes an action plan for reinvention that other cities can adapt and adopt. Urban reinvention requires growth from within—rooted in local assets, shaped by the community’s dreams, and propelled by strategic investments from the public, private, and social sectors.
Below, Nicholas shares five key insights from his new book, Reinventing the Heartland: How One City’s Inclusive Approach to Innovation and Growth Can Revive the American Dream. Listen to the audio version—read by Nicholas himself—in the Next Big Idea App.
1. Cities transitioning from legacy economies to tech need to find their own niche.
Every city in America wants to become a tech hub, yet few succeed—and that’s a problem. Big coastal cities dominate the U.S. innovation system. Tech jobs, venture capital, and R&D are concentrated in San Francisco and New York, leaving the broad middle of the country out. This alienation causes political polarization, exacerbates inequality, and hinders America’s global competitiveness. To thrive in the 21st century, mid-sized cities across the Heartland must build innovation economies of their own. The middle matters and Heartland cities need to reinvent themselves for the Innovation Age.
Cities looking to transition their legacy economies to tech shouldn’t emulate Silicon Valley but rather find their own tech niche. A city’s tech niche represents the strongest opportunities for tech-led and inclusive economic growth in that metropolitan region. It is a city’s special place within the innovation economy.
Defining your tech niche should be based on these four elements:
- It should build on your city’s legacy industries to best facilitate the transition to tech.
- It should represent high-growth emerging tech clusters with the most promise for long-term opportunities.
- It should provide jobs requiring a range of educational attainment levels to ensure that pathways to employment are as inclusive as possible.
- It should give your city the opportunity to lead in these clusters, not just serve as a supporting player. The genuine potential to be a leader in an industry cluster because of existing assets is known as your “right to win.”
For Tulsa, that meant building a bridge from its oil and gas legacy and its aerospace industry to emerging technologies like energy tech and advanced air mobility. My organization built a strategy to invest in those clusters.
2. Cities looking to switch paths need brave leaders.
Cities looking to adjust their course need to cultivate leaders who can see cities from the outside, bring a critical lens to civic ecosystems, and challenge the status quo. The hard truth of the matter is that if you’re a city looking to pivot to tech in 2025, then your economic development practices probably haven’t been working as well as they could.
I discovered in Tulsa that vision and strategy aren’t sufficient for urban reinvention—neither is producing strong work products. I needed to step up as a leader, help shape the ecosystem, and bring the community along with me as we created a shared vision for growth.
One of the things working to my advantage and disadvantage was that I was an outsider—brand new to town from New York City. I wasn’t “of Tulsa,” so I could look dispassionately at the city, make hard choices, and not let one group or another control me. But, also, having no affiliation with Tulsa meant I had no friends, allies, or long-standing partners. I had to build support from the bottom up, allay Tulsa’s sense of stranger danger, and learn how to lead.
3. Cities can’t reinvent themselves until they reconcile past trauma.
Every city has past trauma that it’s still dealing with: historical tragedies or systemic injustices that have shaped communities for generations, informing present inequalities.
For Tulsa, that was the 1921 Race Massacre that destroyed the city’s thriving Black neighborhood Greenwood, also known as Black Wall Street. Black Wall Street was notable because of its wealth and density of Black entrepreneurs and professionals. A white mob razed the neighborhood to the ground, killing hundreds. State and local officials swept it under the rug for decades.
“By acknowledging the past and investing in the future, cities can prosper together.”
But through the centennial of the event in 2021, Tulsa embarked upon a community-wide process of reconciliation. It exhumed graves to properly account for the dead. It built a museum to memorialize the horrific event. And, importantly, it launched initiatives to invest in Tulsa’s Black entrepreneurs.
Despite the backlash against DEI, cities need to recognize that marginalized people are vital economic actors. Cities and economies thrive when everyone can participate. This is the heart and soul of DEI, which should better consider geographic and class inequalities.
Cities should acknowledge that inequality exists—that people don’t have equal opportunity—and then take responsibility for fostering a more inclusive innovation ecosystem. To do so, they need to create DEI interventions that support people who have historically been shut out of tech. By acknowledging the past and investing in the future, cities can prosper together.
4. Cities should focus on existing corporations before approaching startups.
Many cities try to attract any and all startups they can—with little results. Business attraction won’t be their saving grace. I’ve also seen cities very nobly try to build a local entrepreneurial culture and support small businesses. This step is necessary but takes a long time to bear fruit. Most startups fail, and most new bakeries or restaurants don’t have a significant economic impact.
A better approach to starting a tech economy in the near term is to begin by understanding the talent and innovation needs of existing corporations—the large and established companies that already employ a lot of people. Then, work to find startups that meet those needs. In this way, you leverage existing companies and the ecosystems they have built to attract and cultivate new firms. The value proposition for the startup is strong when it can grow in a city with ready-made partners and customers. Cities need to connect the old firms with the new firms.
5. Philanthropy needs to step up.
Especially with a constricting federal government, philanthropy will need to step up and help cities fund economic development projects. For many cities, like Tulsa, the social sector will be a central part of your economic development coalition. You’ll need to understand how to fundraise and manage community foundations, family offices, philanthropies, and high-net-worth donors.
I learned two things from my experience in Tulsa:
The first is that economic development is a team sport, and everyone needs to contribute. This often starts with the social sector and securing a grant commitment, which incentivizes others to become capital partners. Philanthropy can help bring the public and private sectors together to advance inclusive growth efforts.
“Economic development is a team sport, and everyone needs to contribute.”
In Tulsa, we leveraged $20 million in philanthropic funding to raise $7.5 million each from four oil and gas companies to create an initiative supporting energy tech startups. More broadly, though, there’s no doubt that Tulsa-based philanthropies are spearheading the city’s reinvention by building new parks and museums, attracting remote workers to town, and underwriting tech-led economic development.
My second lesson is that the economic development process itself needs to be inclusive. Philanthropic partners need to support cities in a democratic and transparent way that mitigates the power imbalance inherent in that relationship. No one wants billionaire investors or philanthropists to dictate or control cities. That’s why building respectful and reciprocal partnerships between cities and the social sector is so important. When done right, philanthropy can be the first mover in a city’s reinvention and help ensure that the benefits of a new tech economy are spread evenly throughout the community.
To listen to the audio version read by author Nicholas Lalla, download the Next Big Idea App today:
