Episode 46: Building Utah’s Manufacturing Ecosystem: Jeff Edwards on Composites, Collaboration, and the Long Game

I had the opportunity to sit down with Jeff Edwards, Senior Advisor on Materials and Manufacturing at 47G, Utah’s Aerospace and Defense Association, and one of the original regional leaders behind what became AMCC. Jeff and I go back more than a decade to the early days of the EDA Investing in Manufacturing Communities Partnership (IMCP) program, where he was doing the hard, unglamorous work of organizing Utah’s advanced manufacturing ecosystem before most people knew what that meant.

We start where Jeff is now at 47G and then dig into the remarkable backstory behind it. Jeff traces the origins of Utah’s advanced composites industry from its roots in Cold War missile programs to now, through the patient, deliberate work of building the Utah advanced materials and manufacturing ecosystem from the ground up, one relationship and one data point at a time. It’s a textbook case study in how a region can identify a niche, build an ecosystem of support around it, and turn it into a world-class cluster.

We also talk about what IMCP meant for Utah and for the broader national network. Jeff shares examples of how peer learning across IMCP regions led directly to new programs back home, from carbon fiber recycling to succession planning for family-owned defense suppliers. And we dig into the broader case of why regions can’t afford to race to the bottom or go it alone, and what it looks like in practice to build the collaborative, multi-stakeholder structures that can actually move the needle. Thanks to Jeff for a great conversation, give it a listen!

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Thank you to the Economic Development Administration for their partnership in producing this podcast. This podcast was prepared in part using Federal funds under award 3070145 from the Economic Development Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce. The statements, findings, conclusions, and recommendations are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Economic Development Administration or the U.S. Department of Commerce.