Editor’s note: Jon Harol is founder of Lighthouse Lab Services.

APEX – Imagine two shipwrecked sailors in a row boat struggling to reach land. Their survival depends on their success. There is only one island on the horizon and they need to row in harmony and navigate wind, waves and ocean currents in order to avoid going in circles.

Now imagine that the two sailors never communicate about where they are headed or when to row. In fact, they do not discuss any plan and the only communication between them is combative. In my experience, this is how the Public and Private sector typically interact. Both entities are seeking to achieve many of the same goals, however collaboration is a rarity.

I am elbow deep in my third Public Private Partnership (PPP) and it has made me an evangelist. Why aren’t these partnerships more common?

Public private partnerships

Maybe the aversion to the concept of the government collaborating with private companies is rooted in our American identity. The idea of the government helping business owners to succeed invokes feelings of banana republic corruption and runs counter to many American’s belief that the private and public sector should be separate and that the government should not be in the business of choosing winners and losers.

However, this oversimplified paradigm throws the baby out with the bathwater. The key to a successful PPP depends upon defining where public and private interests overlap and developing a symbiotic plan that is mutually beneficial.

Several years ago, the town of Holly Springs developed a new Police Station in town that left the old Police Station vacant. In an effort to utilize the space as an incubator for growing the town’s business community they sent out a public Request For Proposal to develop a coworking space to attract and host local businesses.

The Coworking Station, which now hosts over twenty companies, resulted as the fruit of this endeavor. The space filled up within 6 months attracted Gregg Sinders, a thought leader in the education space, who formulated a plan to launch Pine Springs Academy, a new charter school. Due to the flexibility of the space he was able to secure funding and recruit and hire the schools Headmaster, administrative team all of the school’s teaching staff, while working out of the coworking space.

Pine Springs went on to build a new campus in Holly Springs that now provides innovative education to over 500 local students. The town has benefited from the newly developed school campus, the newly created jobs, and the additional educational opportunities available to its residents. This is an example of how just one tenant has benefited the town as a whole as a result of the partnership.

In January of 2010, as an economic development initiative by the Town of Wake Forest, the Wireless Research Center (WRC) was formed out of a Public Private Partnership. It has become a world class testing and engineering facility devoted to the advancement of wireless technologies and the promotion of economic development.

As an independent, 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, the WRC is uniquely positioned to serve large and small corporations as well as to partner with universities and governments locally and globally, addressing broad market and technology needs. The WRC maintains industry leadership in the development, standardization, and harmonization of wearable, medical, 5G, IoT, aviation, and sensor systems.

Since inception, the WRC has supported over 250 organizations with research and development of wireless products over a broad range of market sectors (commercial, medical, public safety, aviation, and Department of Defense).

In 2015, the WRC supported the promotion of RIoT (Regional Internet of Things) as part of their economic development mission to establish a collaborative IoT ecosystem.  According to Dr. Gerard Hayes, the President and CEO of the WRC, the RIoT initiative has grown to over 6,000 individual members and over 80 companies.  Jason Cannon, the President of the Wake Forest Business & Industry Partnership and  Economic Development Director for the town of Wake Forest points to the success of this collaborative effort and is always looking for other opportunities to leverage the power of public and private partnerships.

Seeking to revitalize the downtown and solve a parking problem, Irena Krstanovic, the Director of Economic Development in Holly Springs, again tapped the power of a Public Private Partnership. She successfully recruited two private companies for development projects by offering a collaboration with the town for the construction of parking garage.

The expanded parking capacity would enable the developers to focus on adding as much commercial square footage as possible and knowing that it would create the density of retail and office space that a vibrant downtown requires. The town’s $9.3 million investment in parking infrastructure and roadwork improvements was able to attract a $23.4 million investment of private funds into the downtown, which is projected to create over 500 new jobs and have an economic benefit to the town in excess of $1 billion over the next twenty years.

Jon Harol

These are just a few examples of Private Public Partnerships that have occurred in our area and I hope they will serve as a template for future PPP collaboration. Much like rocket fuel, the mixture of public and private funds must be done carefully, but when executed correctly the results are explosive and even the sky is no longer the limit.

About Jon Harol

I am a Serial Entrepreneur that has had the privilege of being part of the founding of four companies, all of which I still manage. Most of my work occurs in the medical laboratory space, where my companies provide staffing services (Lighthouse Recruiting), turnkey laboratory startup and consulting services (Laboratory Start-Up Consultants) and business brokerage services (LaboratoryBroker.com). 

However, I also own and operate The Coworking Station, which is a collaborative workspace based in Holly Springs, NC which is currently the home for employees of 21 different companies.