One of the most remarkable things about the United States is its limitless potential for renewal and innovation from the ground up. As New Localism has consistently observed, power in our nation is widely distributed across the republic via levels of government (states for sure but also counties, cities, municipalities and a plethora of public or quasi-public agencies) as well as networks of private, civic and philanthropic institutions and leaders. This expands the purview beyond traditional constitutional federalism (which only recognizes two layers) to a “whole of nation” construct.
This messy mix of players and stakeholders are discovering that they have more power than they think and more capital than they know. And they are busy seizing opportunities in ways that leverage the distinctive assets and cultures of their places and activate new ways of radical collaboration. Priorities, areas of focus and the shape of solutions shift across geographies, given differences in market conditions, leadership networks and ideological preferences. What unites this is a bias for action and problem solving.
At a time when our national narrative has increasingly been about the fragility of our institutions and democracy itself, the churning of innovative problem solving at the city and metropolitan scale exhibits a level of strength and resilience that is affirmative and inspiring and, more importantly, a foundation on which to build.
With this backdrop in mind, it’s appropriate to interview Nicholas Lalla. Earlier this year, HarperCollins published his book Reinventing the Heartland, a guide for building inclusive innovation economies across America. I was fortunate to read galleys of the book and was able to participate in the initial rollout of the book in New York City:
https://www.c-span.org/program/book-tv/reinventing-the-heartland/656384
Nick works at the intersection of economic development and emerging technology, partnering with organizations to design strategies and investments that catalyze growth and innovation. He previously founded Tulsa Innovation Labs, an economic development organization deploying more than $200 million in northeast Oklahoma and led Cyber NYC, a $30 million initiative at the New York City Economic Development Corporation. He now leads Urban Reinvention Strategies, a boutique consultancy, and can be found online at www.nicholaslalla.com.
Nick, you moved from New York to Tulsa and back again. What drew you to Tulsa in the first place?
When I moved from Manhattan to Tulsa in 2019, a lot of people told me to my face that I was crazy. I was leading a successful initiative at the New York City Economic Development Corporation and folks wondered why I would give that up to lead an economic development campaign in Tulsa. But I was drawn to a unique—if somewhat random—opportunity that turned out to be transformational.
Although I was born and raised in New Orleans, I’d spent most of my adult life on the east coast, bouncing between New York and Washington. Like a lot of people, the 2016 election showed me that my understanding of America was incomplete. I had become disconnected from much of the American experience—and in a lot of ways disconnected from my own working-class roots. I saw Tulsa as an opportunity to build a bridge back to a part of the country that resembled where I grew up far more than my Upper East Side neighborhood.
I’ve witnessed how folks in DC and New York can ignore the vast middle of the country and I was beginning to appreciate the consequences. I also knew that tech was concentrating in just a few coastal hubs, limiting opportunity for most midsized cities. I felt this dynamic was widening inequality and driving political polarization, and I wanted to do something about it. Given that context, the opportunity to help a midsized city in the Heartland build an innovation economy from the bottom up was so compelling to me that it didn’t feel like a risky decision. Today, nearly six years later, next gen technology has exploded, and politics has become even more toxic, but I still believe that building innovation economies in the Heartland is essential for America’s long-term prosperity.
HarperCollins published your book Reinventing the Heartland earlier this year. Why did you write the book and why did you structure it the way you did?
Tulsa changed my life, and I wanted to share what I thought was an inspirational story with others. I see Tulsa as a microcosm for America—an example of the need to expand the geography of innovation as well as an example of what midsized cities can do when they believe and invest in themselves. The book memorializes my founding vision of Tulsa Innovation Labs, which is that every city has a place in tech if they can find their niche. To accomplish that, they’ll need to act strategically and urgently, so the book is structured as an action plan—ten steps to catalyzing tech-led growth. While there’s an important place for theory in the field, the value I bring is as a practitioner—how do you actually get things done in the real world. The book reflects that point of view, and its structure reflects my desire to spark action and investment, not merely thought and conversation. I speak to cities nearly every week, and they all want to strengthen their tech sector and grow good jobs. Yet most, if we’re being honest, are more talk than action. The cities that will thrive in the decades ahead are acting today—and doing so despite national headwinds. My book can help them make bold and thoughtful investments that position their communities for long-term success.
The first point in your action plan is that cities need to find their “Tech Niche.” How does a city do that amid the proliferation of AI and other next gen technologies?
Cities need to find their Tech Niche as soon as possible. By that, I don’t mean chasing the hottest new technology—I mean identifying the slice of the innovation economy that best aligns with their region’s assets and that offers the strongest opportunities for growth.
That’s especially important in this moment. AI is reshaping legacy industries, labor markets, and technology all at once. It’s easy for civic leaders to feel overwhelmed or paralyzed, to say, “How will my city ever carve out a niche?” But you don’t want to get further behind the curve, so the answer is to start building an innovation economy of your own today. An industry cluster strategy that factors in uncertainty and is agile enough to be effective even during changing times can help you develop your niche.
And the first step toward building that strategy is starting with your legacy industries, however counter intuitive it may seem. Rather than trying to figure out AI’s next development, anchor your strategy to your legacy industries. There are a million technologies out there but there’s a relatively narrow set that are directly adjacent to your legacy industries—and even fewer that are forecasted to have strong growth. It’s entirely feasible, therefore, to find your niche if you build on what you have already, not try and create something from nothing.
By connecting legacy industries to adjacent emerging technologies, cities can both strengthen existing industries—making them more innovative and resilient—and seed new industries. In Tulsa, for example, oil and gas has been the dominant industry for generations. The focus there isn’t on quantum computing, for instance, it’s on energy tech. The city is connecting startups that can deliver the automation, analytics, and operational technologies oil and gas companies need today while also nurturing the renewables industry which can create new opportunities. AI will play a role in all of this, impacting specific types of jobs in energy in particular, but the key is leveraging your industrial base to guide investment in emerging tech.
At the same time, a Tech Niche isn’t a fixed identity. Technology is evolving every day, and cities and their economic development strategies must evolve too. As New Localism has chronicled, Pittsburgh’s story shows what’s possible: evolving from steel town to industrial robotics leader to the potential home for physical AI. The most dynamic cities reinvent themselves continuously, aligning their strategies with emerging trends and measuring their ROI along the way, adjusting where needed. So, think of your niche as your city’s innovation identity—an identity based on data and strategic choices, but that matures and changes over time.
To stay agile, cities need to strengthen the connective tissue within their ecosystem, especially between major institutions across sectors. Is there a governance and partnership model that can deliver your strategy, share data, communicate, and coordinate? Those investments in alignment and coordination are critical because they’ll serve your community well when circumstances change. Similarly, as you design initiatives, work to ensure that they’re agile. Meaning if you’re building a startup accelerator, applied R&D center, or workforce academy, ensure that programmatic infrastructure can adapt as needs change. So, for example, in Tulsa, the Cyber Skills Center at Tulsa Innovation Community College initially focused on cyber and data analytics training. But the program can pivot and deliver other curriculum if needs require. Cities don’t need to predict the future; they need to be able to shape and adapt to it.
A few of the book’s other points have been upheaved by the Trump administration, such as DEI, academic innovation (higher ed), and federal funding. How can cities adopt those recommendations given ongoing political and policy disruptions?
Naturally, I think the book captures lessons and insights that are ever green and widely applicable, but it’s absolutely true that much of the world has changed since I finished writing in December 2024. The three chapters you called out are the ones that have been most impacted, so let me address them and explain how I seeing them playing out in today’s environment.
DEI: Diversity, equity, and inclusion has become so politicized and weaponized that it’s been canceled for all intents and purposes. Even before the backlash, when I was in Oklahoma, DEI was one of our stealth objectives because I knew it didn’t resonate with many state and corporate leaders. So, we zeroed in on things civic leaders really cared about, namely getting high quality tech talent. (We had internal goals and made specific efforts to ensure the talent we were supporting was diverse, but partners didn’t really need to know about it). That said, the thrust of my book—inclusive growth—remains as important as ever. To me, cities and regions should aspire to build economies in which all people can participate. That’s what inclusive growth means to me—that the benefits of a tech economy aren’t concentrated in certain demographic groups but spread more evenly. Framed that way and ditching some problematic rhetoric, I don’t think inclusive growth has to be controversial. Afterall, the more people participating in the economy, the better. And most folks recognize the negative consequences of a tech boon in which only a few benefit—we’ve seen what’s happened in San Francisco and Austin, and the cascading problems they’ve had. To really achieve inclusive growth, however, cities are going to need to take intentional, proactive measures to support populations who historically have not participated in tech. And if identity-based initiatives, such as support for Black entrepreneurs or women in tech, aren’t possible in your region, then my advice is to take a place-based approach akin to Trump’s Opportunity Zones. Place is a proxy for race and class, so empowering folks from distressed zip codes to get jobs in tech can be a pragmatic workaround.
Academic Innovation. Of all the counterproductive and senseless policies coming out of the Trump administration, the attacks on higher education and cuts to science and research are among the most painful and infuriating to me. Universities aren’t so much bastions of wokeness or discrimination, but engines for talent and innovation. Every tech hub on the planet has one if not multiple research universities that are churning out tech talent and innovation. Most midsized cities in America have universities, but many aren’t aligned with their region’s economic development strategy; they’re not oriented to produce tech and talent that can directly feed industry clusters. Cities need to welcome university leaders into the economic development coalition, invest in academic strengths, and partner with industry. In Tulsa, we established the Oklahoma Cyber Innovation Institute at the University of Tulsa to turbo charge the university’s strength in cyber, with a priority on use cases for energy. You’re likely going to need to start with one strong department and build its R&D capacity, working outward. Absent federal funding, the other important thing that can aid commercialization is industry partnerships. Industry research labs can collaborate with faculty to develop, invest, and adopt innovations. It would be a mistake for state and local governments, industry, or philanthropy to stop investing in higher ed, and I urge them to step up their engagement during these times.
Federal Funding: I don’t think anyone expected the Trump Administration to launch Build Back Better or Tech Hubs-level programs, but the wholesale cuts to federal departments is putting great strain on cities, forcing them to do more with significantly less. The Biden administration rightly focused on place-based economic development, using challenge grants to encourage regional innovation ecosystem building—incentivizing urban and rural partnerships especially. That paid off for Tulsa as we were one of only two cities to win both Build Back Better and Tech Hubs grants. I happen to think that policy framework is a sound one and I’d love to see this current administration advance it in its own way, if not through largescale grant programs than through other policy means. But I’m not seeing that. I’ll be honest, I don’t have a great solution to the lack of federal funds challenge. A lot of good projects aren’t going to move forward. So, cities and states are going to need to get even more strategic and make very hard choices. They’re also going to need to get more creative in how they build partnerships, enlisting the private sector but also the philanthropic sector as Tulsa has done so effectively. And when you dig deep and build a project and fund a project together as a community, you’re going to feel an immense sense of pride and accomplishment. And so, for me, anytime I get too down about what’s happening nationally, I try and find something wonderful happening at the local level—and there’s thousands of examples of that, which gives me hope and optimism. Cities can take their fate into their own hands, so even if the federal government isn’t investing in their future, they need to do it themselves—there’s something empowering about that challenge.
A lot of people are wondering how Tulsa is faring these days?
I think Tulsa’s doing great. I’m no longer immersed in the local economy so I can’t speak to how market disruptions are impacting things, but there’s not a week that goes by that I don’t hear from at least a few Tulsans and read news headlines about how things are going more generally. Most of the economic development work is now in implementation mode, and I think there’s a couple lessons from this current phase:
First, good leadership can’t be overvalued. In Tulsa recently there’s been turnover at the leadership level, which has caused some disruptions. The city recently got a new mayor—Monroe Nichols IV—and I know folks are optimistic about his administration. But you’ve also had the presidents of a couple universities resign somewhat unexpectedly and those are critical institutions for the region. You’ve also had some amazing economic developers leave for new opportunities, and that’s been unfortunate because it hinders implementation and continuity. That said, what gives me hope for Tulsa is that a new generation of leader is emerging—younger, more diverse, and action oriented. They’re not content with the status quo and they’re making moves. Tulsa needs to support and retain these young civic leaders.
Second, implementation is hard! We had just started moving toward implementation when I left Tulsa Innovation Labs to write the book. I knew that TIL’s second chapter would be its most important because success ultimately depends on initiatives working in practice. A compelling vision and sound strategy are important, but once the ribbon cuttings are over you really need to buckle down to achieve outcomes. Pauses in federal funding, broader policy uncertainty, leadership challenges, and turnover aren’t helpful. I think this is where having defined metrics and a culture of accountability and trust is so important. Economic developers, funders, and implementation partners all need to hold each other accountable for meeting responsibilities and ensuring performance.
I get asked a lot: has Tulsa succeeded? And it’s not really a binary or a clear-cut answer. It’s certainly not going to be answered today, just a few years into this whole project. I think Tulsa has made truly historic progress and I feel confident that the city’s trajectory is strong. But cities need to be realistic. The truth of the matter is that economic development is a long term and continuous process. And so, I say to Tulsa’s civic leaders—especially its funders—keep going. Stick to it. Look at the amazing wins you’ve already achieved!
What are you thinking about now for your next step?
After four wonderful years in Tulsa—plus a stint in Los Angeles to write the book—I’m back in New York with a far richer perspective. I’m finally getting settled here and just launched my own consultancy, Urban Reinvention Strategies. I’m currently working with some amazing cities, including one in the South and one in the Midwest, so I’m excited to continue supporting the Heartland. Beyond that, I’m reconnecting with my community in New York and talking to really smart folks nationwide about how I can best advocate for inclusive growth. I think harnessing tech to create good jobs is one of our society’s defining challenges—and with AI and ongoing federal disruptions, achieving that is only getting harder by the day. I want to figure out how I can continue to play my part in that project, so I’m taking time to reflect on myself and listen to what communities need.