New models for innovation sometimes come from unlikely places, as the authors of “The Smartest Places on Earth” chronicle in their thought-provoking book released this week. Takes From Silicon Valley East brings you this preview.

Just a few years ago, the United States seemed to be losing the competitive race to China, turning proud industrial powerhouses like Akron and Pittsburgh into rustbelt cities. What is often overlooked is that, while millions of workers lost their jobs and thousands of factories closed, many rustbelt universities maintained their world-class research capability and this was leveraged into developing smart new products needed for the 21st century. Washington did not provide a safety net, but the bipartisan Bayh-Dole Act (1980) allowed universities and researchers to profit from federally funded research. Following the examples of Silicon Valley and Cambridge, universities moved beyond their ivory towers and learned to collaborate closely with startups, legacy companies and local officials in a process we call “sharing brainpower.” That became the secret sauce to reinventing innovation – this time not top-down but bottom-up, not hierarchical but collegial, not proprietary but open, and not siloed but interdisciplinary.

Today, many of these rustbelt cities are experiencing a remarkable comeback. They are becoming tomorrow’s brainbelts. There are now some 35 brainbelts around the country, two-thirds of them former rustbelt cities. How have they done it? Not by bringing back your father’s manufacturing, but by reinventing how we make things. In fact, creating a whole new branch of the economy by integrating advanced production methods, new materials, and new discoveries with wireless information technology and big data analytics. Think of self-driving cars, wearables that monitor health, smart grids, and ever-smarter smartphones.

In these brainbelts, we see the emergence of a whole new paradigm of global competition. For the past 25 years, China has been beating the “old,” Western economies by making things as cheap as possible. Now the United States is developing a more effective response. We believe that, for the next 25 years, the focus will be on making things as smart as possible, playing to our unique (and often overlooked) assets such as world-class research universities, freedom of thinking (indispensable for innovation), and a trusted legal system. “Smart” is replacing “cheap” as the new mantra.

These new brainbelts share common characteristics: (1) a life-threatening situation has forced groups that might not normally collaborate to break out of their silos and work together; (2) there is a pool of talent shared by universities and business, new and old; and (3) there is a broad understanding that an infrastructure is needed that includes incubators, informal meeting spaces, and plentiful, well-priced housing designed to keep attract and keep top talent; (4) they focus their efforts on the complex and expensive challenges of the 21st century that require multidisciplinary expertise—such as chip making, new materials, and bioscience and (5) a connector emerges with the vision to inspire people and motivate them to dream again.

Our book is an antidote to what we hear some of the presidential candidates on the left and the right say. We believe that this new competitive edge will boost our confidence and create new jobs, both for researchers and professionals with post-secondary STEM skills, and also in related and supporting businesses. It will require expansion of technical colleges and new training programs (patterned on the German work-study model). And we will see long-outsourced products such as shoes, shirts, and consumer electronics again with the Made In USA label.

On visits to a dozen of these brainbelts and in talking to hundreds of scientists, startups and business executives for our new book The Smartest Places on Earth: Why Rustbelts are the Emerging Hotspots of Global Innovation, we have witnessed this trend first-hand and are convinced that it is real. That is the basis for our optimism and strong conviction that the United States is not in decline, but is on the cusp of a new wave of innovation and competitiveness.

The Smartest Places on Earth: Why Rustbelts are the Emerging Hotspots of Global Innovation (Public Affairs, March 2016), by Antoine van Agtmael and Fred Bakker

Antoine van Agtmael is senior adviser at Garten Rothkopf, a public policy advisory firm in Washington, DC, is known for coining the term “emerging markets” and founded Emerging Markets Management LLC in 1987 which became a leading investment advisory firm in his area.

Alfred Bakker was editor-in-chief of Het Financieele Dagblad, the “Financial Times of Holland,” and helped develop the company from a newspaper publisher to a multimedia company.

They are the co-authors of The Smartest Places on Earth (Public Affairs, March 2016)