Catawba County built the fiber that powers the modern world—but hasn’t built a modern world for itself. For all its industrial strength, this region remains stuck in an older operating system. The factories are global; the public systems are local. Hickory’s name is stamped on the backbone of the internet, yet its own civic infrastructure still runs on paper, politics, and outdated software. The Absent Innovation Core explores how the region’s greatest export—technology—never became its foundation, and what it will take to change that.
The Paradox of Production Without Application
Catawba County helped build the digital world. From the fiber optics of Commscope and Corning to advanced cable and materials engineering, this region’s industrial backbone powers the same networks that drive global communication and data. Yet for all its production strength, the region has failed to apply that same innovation at home. Hickory sits in the center of a high-tech corridor but operates with the digital infrastructure of a city decades behind its potential. The companies headquartered here connect nations, but the community itself remains disconnected—technologically, economically, and institutionally. What should be a showcase of digital excellence instead reflects a region content to make the tools of the future for everyone but itself.
Industrial Assets, Civic Inertia
The foundation for a modern innovation economy appears to exist here—but most of it operates above the local ground. CommScope and Corning are global leaders in fiber optics and engineering, yet their local footprint tells a smaller story. A modest number of regional jobs remain, while the bulk of operations, research, and profits are managed elsewhere. The companies’ global reputations lend Hickory prestige but little transformation. The fiber that carries data across oceans is manufactured here, yet the same technology has not been used to modernize our own schools, utilities, or city systems. Hickory helps connect the world, but it has never demanded to be connected in return. The result is a quiet paradox: a community surrounded by innovation but not technologically associated with it in a meaningful way.
Failure to Imagine a Tech Future
Hickory’s problem is not a shortage of tools—it’s a shortage of imagination. The city produces materials that power the digital age but has no coordinated vision for how to live in it. There is no smart-city plan, no innovation district, and no civic strategy to integrate technology into everyday life. Public infrastructure remains analog in both function and mindset. Basic services such as permitting, utilities, and data management still operate on systems that lag decades behind larger peers. Local leaders talk about revitalization, but rarely in terms of modernization. Other midsize cities have invested in public-private partnerships and digital transformation, while Hickory continues to approach growth through construction projects and marketing campaigns. The result isn’t progress—it’s maintenance dressed as movement.
Educational Gaps in the Pipeline
The region’s schools and colleges reflect the same mismatch between potential and preparation. Digital literacy is still treated like an optional skill—not a civic necessity. Most students graduate able to use a computer, but not to understand or build with it. Public schools rely on dated computer labs and uneven broadband access, and few offer meaningful programs in AI, data science or cybersecurity. On the higher-education side, there are promising signs:
Catawba Valley Community College’s Valley Datacenter Academy (in collaboration with Microsoft) provides hands-on training for cloud and infrastructure work. Microsoft Local+1 And Lenoir-Rhyne University’s entrepreneurship major and its Lenoir-Rhyne Center for Commercial and Social Entrepreneurship support business creation in the region. lr.edu+1 These initiatives matter—but they are isolated. They have yet to scale or integrate into a systematic tech-and-innovation pipeline for the entire workforce. The result is a workforce ready to consume technology, not to create and lead it. This is the new skills divide—not just who has internet access, but who can turn access into opportunity.
Winston-Salem’s Innovation Quarter began in the early 2000s as a bold reinvention of the old R.J. Reynolds tobacco district. The idea was spearheaded by Wake Forest University Health Sciences in partnership with the City of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County, with strong early backing from the Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust. What had been a cluster of abandoned brick factories became a test case for 21st-century urban renewal—proving that technology ecosystems could grow from industrial bones if leadership aligned across education, government, and philanthropy.
Ground was broken in 2012 on the first wave of redevelopment. The initial tenants were research labs from Wake Forest School of Medicine, small biotech startups spun out of university projects, and several data-driven design firms that relocated to the renovated Bailey Power Plant. By 2015, more than $500 million in public-private investment had transformed 330 acres of vacant industrial land into an open-innovation campus that combined housing, co-working, research, and recreation.
This transformation was not accidental—it was curated. The city treated the Quarter as a living civic laboratory, not just a real-estate play.
Today the Innovation Quarter hosts more than 90 companies and 3,700 employees, ranging from biotechnology to data analytics. It draws students from Forsyth Tech and Wake Forest, providing them with internship and startup pathways—exactly the connective tissue Hickory lacks. The project shows what happens when a city stops defending old boundaries and starts designing a shared future. It took a decaying tobacco plant and turned it into a knowledge engine. Hickory already has the industrial credibility; what it doesn’t yet have is the coalition willing to treat innovation as a public mandate.
🧩 Workforce Attrition and The Hollow Shift Connection (Ties to last week’s article): Schism 7’s “innovation vacuum” connects directly to the labor disconnection detailed in Schism 6. Together, they show how the absence of modernization feeds both demographic and skill attrition in Catawba County.
- How does workforce attrition connect to the tech vacuum? (Answer): Hickory’s innovation gap isn’t just about technology—it’s about people leaving. Schism 6 documented the “hollow shift”: older workers aging out and younger ones leaving for regions with visible tech ecosystems. Without a credible pathway into modern industries, Catawba County exports its most adaptable talent. The absence of civic innovation amplifies that drain.
- What data demonstrate this attrition? (Answer): According to recent NC Commerce and OSBM data, Catawba County’s 25-to-44 age cohort has grown less than 2 percent since 2010—compared to over 20 percent in Mecklenburg and 15 percent in Forsyth. Meanwhile, the 65+ population grew by more than 30 percent. That imbalance mirrors the innovation deficit: regions that invest in digital infrastructure attract younger residents; regions that do not, lose them.
- How should Schism 7 address the “alignment failure” identified in Schism 6? (Answer): The absence of innovation isn’t an isolated failure—it’s the visible symptom of the same misalignment that hollowed out Hickory’s labor market. Schism 6 showed how two generations were trapped by outdated job ladders. Schism 7 explains why those ladders were never replaced: because the city never built a future to climb into. Workforce and innovation are two halves of the same system; without one, the other withers.
- How to close the section with strategic continuity? (Answer): Unless Hickory modernizes its workforce development and technology integration in tandem, the city will keep training people for yesterday’s jobs while neighboring metros invest in tomorrow’s. The Innovation Quarter example proves that transformation is possible—but only when civic leaders treat education, entrepreneurship, and digital infrastructure as a single ecosystem.
The path forward begins with real alignment—between schools, employers, and civic institutions that understand the future won’t wait for Hickory to catch up.
Startup and Civic Tech Vacuum
Hickory has the technical talent to support a startup ecosystem, but almost none of the structure needed to sustain one. There are no dedicated innovation districts, few business accelerators, and little municipal support for early-stage ventures. Most entrepreneurship programs operate in isolation through small business centers or university initiatives without shared funding or mentorship networks. The city has not established any civic innovation fellowships, digital adoption grants, or testbed projects to pilot new technologies in public spaces. Local governments still contract out tech services instead of developing in-house talent or partnerships that could grow regional capacity. As a result, the digital economy develops elsewhere. Startups launch in Charlotte or Winston-Salem, while Hickory remains a place where ideas are manufactured, not developed. The absence of civic tech experimentation has turned the city into a follower instead of a leader—a production hub without an innovation core.
Costs of the Vacuum
The cost of this innovation gap is more than economic—it’s generational. When a community exports its talent and imports its technology, it loses both control and identity. Young professionals who might build the next phase of Hickory’s economy leave for places that reward experimentation and risk. Those who stay are funneled into traditional roles that offer stability but little advancement. The absence of a modern innovation ecosystem weakens the entire civic structure. Without a strong tech core, new industries bypass the region, wages stall, and public institutions fall further behind in service delivery. Each missed opportunity compounds the next. The region becomes known not for what it invents, but for what it used to build. Hickory’s legacy industries once defined the future of communication; now the city risks becoming the last to benefit from the future it helped create.
The Path Forward
Fixing this isn’t about chasing trends or branding Hickory as a “tech hub.” It’s about building the groundwork for real modernization—where the city becomes a working example of the tools it already produces. That begins with leadership that understands innovation as infrastructure, not ornament. Local governments could integrate AI and data systems into planning, permitting, and public safety. Schools could partner with industry to create digital literacy and cloud training pipelines that start in middle school and continue through college. CVCC’s Valley Datacenter Academy could expand beyond its current focus to serve regional employers, while Lenoir-Rhyne could link its entrepreneurship program to civic-tech incubators. Public libraries, workforce centers, and community colleges could function as neighborhood digital hubs. Most importantly, anchor companies like Commscope and Corning should be challenged to reinvest their knowledge and resources into the local ecosystem—not just their products. Hickory doesn’t need to invent a future from scratch; it needs to apply what it already knows.
Conclusion: Straight Talk
Hickory has everything it needs to build a strong future—it just hasn’t connected the dots. The technology that powers the world is made here, but the city still runs like it’s 1995. That can change. Innovation isn’t about being flashy or chasing Silicon Valley dreams; it’s about using what we already have to make life work better for everyone. When schools teach real tech skills, when businesses share their knowledge with the community, and when leaders see modernization as a duty instead of a slogan, progress follows. Hickory doesn’t need more ribbon cuttings or slogans about growth—it needs working systems that prove the future lives here, not somewhere else.
Innovation isn’t something to advertise; it’s something to apply. Hickory’s companies already make the technology that connects continents. The challenge now is to use that same ingenuity to connect people, systems, and opportunities at home. The future won’t come from outside investors or slogans—it will come from a community that finally decides to modernize itself.
Hickory’s innovation gap is not just an economic liability—it is a cultural one. When a city stops producing new ideas, it also stops producing new stories about itself. Institutions lose purpose. Talent drifts. The civic narrative that once tied generations together begins to thin. An innovation core doesn’t only create jobs; it creates identity, continuity, and a sense of forward motion. Without it, the community starts forgetting what made it matter in the first place. That is where the next fracture emerges—not in technology or industry, but in memory itself. When the engines of renewal stall, a city’s story starts to fade from the map. And that fading is the next schism we must confront.
