Matthew Grigsby, above, and co-founder Joseph Gebbia started Ecolect three years ago as an online clearinghouse for information about sustainable materials. The RISD graduates are building their business at The Plant, on Valley Street.

The Providence Journal / Bob Thayer

If you own an iPhone, you might have already met Cronk.

Cronk is a caveman protecting his village from boulders rolling down a hillside in a video game sold for Apple’s wildly popular smartphone.

There are thousands of applications for the iPhone, but Cronk, the creation of former GTECH employees Joel Evans and Dan Bergeron, is one of only a few that is Rhode Island-born.

“We have a team of software developers that we use in Switzerland, Canada and elsewhere, but we’re looking for local talent,” Evans said. “We know there are some really brilliant minds here.”

Unlocking that brain power is the key to reviving Rhode Island’s collapsing economy. And the state has been given a once-in-a-generation opportunity to do just that.

Billions of dollars of federal stimulus money are in play. A ribbon of priceless real estate is opening up in downtown Providence. The public is demanding bold moves from state leaders, as the unemployment rate hits a debilitating 10.5 percent.

“People need to bite the bullet and take on some sacred cows,” said Robert D. Atkinson, president of a Washington, D.C., think tank and a former head of the state’s Economic Development Corporation. “It’s like the frog in the boiling water. Maybe it’s hot enough now.”

Pieces of a new economy have taken hold alongside the old-line manufacturers and old-school small businesses that have been pummeled beyond repair by the recession. But it’s not nearly enough.

For years, the state has been hatching campaigns to build a knowledge economy based on information technology, biotechnology and life sciences. The efforts, however, have been small and scattershot. Tiny awards for biological research. A few desks for entrepreneurs. Modest tax breaks for research and development spending. A Web site for networking.

None of those initiatives can succeed if the state continues to lose its most precious resource, the creative and brainy college graduates who will lead the country’s economic transformation.

“There’s a lot of pressure after graduation to get that prestigious job at Microsoft or Google,” said Charlie Kroll, a 2001 Brown University graduate who founded the Providence software company Andera while still in college.

In Providence, there is a particular need for policymakers to persuade graduates in industrial design and IT to stick around. And it needs to do so in a way that preserves the Ocean State quirkiness that sets it apart, says Jack Templin, a technology consultant who came to Providence by way of New York City and has become an unofficial spokesman for IT and digital media start-ups.

“You don’t want another Route 128. That’s soulless,” said Templin, referring to the corridor of high-technology businesses in Massachusetts that is the envy of post-industrial America. “Providence has so much to offer. Its natural beauty, its historical nature, its arts and culture, its colleges and universities. These are the kinds of things that make up a real, livable community,” he said.

Tino Chow and Aaron Perry-Zucker, Rhode Island School of Design seniors and the founders of Design Think Tank, are also sold on Rhode Island as a place to innovate.

Chow, a Singapore native, and Perry-Zucker, from Los Angeles, have little start-up capital. But they say they have enough connections in New York and Boston and nonprofit clients impressed by their designs to keep busy.

“There are some people that will think, no matter what you do, that Providence is too small. They need Manhattan or Los Angeles,” Chow said. “But that’s not all of us.”

Local alumni like RISD graduates Matthew Grigsby and Joseph Gebbia, who started Ecolect, a three-year old firm that runs an online clearinghouse for information about sustainable materials, are building their business in Providence.

To truly break the brain-drain cycle, however, the state’s universities, businesses and policymakers must come out of their separate worlds, experts say. That process began before the recession hit, but now it is an urgent priority.

The business community in particular must create better links to universities through internships that entice graduates to stay in the state, according to Laurie White, the president of the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce. Experienced entrepreneurs, meanwhile, should mentor up-and-coming innovators, said Richard G. Horan, senior managing director of the Slater Technology Fund, a taxpayer-backed pool of venture capital.

Richard Seline, a consultant in Washington, D.C., who has researched the state’s knowledge industries, also sees promise. Providence, he says, should look to Austin, Texas, another state capital with a glut of universities and a thriving cultural scene that has seen start-up technology firms bloom through collaborations between universities, businesses and government.

The Science and Technology Advisory Council, which helps develop Rhode Island’s research priorities, has been prodding that type of cooperation. Its annual grant program, for example, requires partnerships between universities, companies and medical centers.

But Rhode Island has a long way to go in pooling its resources to create strong knowledge clusters.

The health-care sector has been one of the state’s few growing areas, even during the recession. Still, when Timothy J. Babineau left Baltimore in October to run Rhode Island Hospital, he found little of the long-promised cooperation. “The research has to be combined in a better way,” he said. “I’ve been here only six months and I’m already starting to get slightly frustrated.”

Babineau is hoping the state will grab as much as $350 million from the pool of stimulus funds not targeted for a specific state to build a center for personalized medicine in Providence. There, he said, scientists from Brown University and other schools could conduct research and clinical studies and investors could find technology to bring to market.

For that to happen, however, would require a new level of coordination, including a rapid, statewide expansion of electronic medical records and unprecedented agreements on shared governance and intellectual property rights. “Lifespan can’t do it alone. Brown can’t do it alone. The city can’t do it alone. The state can’t do it alone,” Babineau said. “We need to partner.”

Though daunting in scope, that type of project could help build the critical mass of health-care businesses that executives in the field say is critically needed. “It’s hard to work in a vacuum,” Larry Wesson, president of Providence-based MEDport, a medical and health supplies company, said.

Biotechnology boosters are also thinking big, daydreaming about laying claim to land freed up by the demolition of old stretches of Route 195 in Providence that cut through the Jewelry District.

Along those 20 acres the city envisions residences, university and hospital buildings, retail shops and offices –– an attempt to recreate Boston’s biotech cluster in Kendall Square by MIT.

But that could take years, and by the time the land is freed up, the federal aid and momentum for change may be long forgotten.

“A business incubator is nice, but that was the 20th-century model,” RISD President John Maeda said in an interview. “You can spend years building and staffing an incubator, but by then the recession will be over. Why not do it now?”

The state, Maeda argues, should guide entrepreneurs as they start their businesses, and universities should give a boost to them in their classrooms. “We have to make graduates feel desirable,” he said. “There needs to be a personal passion from our leaders to make that happen. That’s incubating.”

Improving the business climate is not easy. The low quality of Rhode Island’s public schools has made the state radioactive to many investors who worry about finding quality employees and educating their children.

“Not everyone can afford a private school or to live in East Greenwich or Barrington,” said Michael McMahon, a former director of the state Economic Development Corporation who now helps run Pine Brook Road Partners, a New York private-equity firm. “People who put up with a high-cost environment demand something in return.”

William H. Weedon, chief executive officer of Applied Radar, in North Kingstown, has had to recruit engineers from Atlanta to keep his company growing. “The hardest part is finding the manpower,” said Weedon, whose company makes components for advanced radar systems. “We have to bring them here. We’re looking all over the place.”

Fixing the schools is complex, though the knowledge community could play a role, advising on education policy and entering the classroom. Angus Davis, who sold his Tellme Networks to Microsoft in 2007, now sits on the Board of Regents for Elementary and Secondary Education.

There are other, quicker ways to improve the state’s standing in the eyes of businesses. Governor Carcieri is pushing a major reform of the state’s tax structure, hoping to lower the cost of doing business here so that existing companies grow and new ones move into the state.

Given the ire directed at Wall Street, it is not clear if the proposed tax breaks for businesses will survive in the General Assembly. Carcieri, however, has allies in his fight –– the legions of small businesses that complain of stifling taxes and regulations.

“If I can make it here, I can make it anywhere,” said Rachel Brian, who in 2006 opened a high-end clothing store for infants, Mod Momma, that is releasing its own line of dresses and T-shirts called Rocket 10. “We do pay a lot of taxes.”

Among the proposals, Carcieri wants to slash the state’s corporate income-tax rate. “Most people, if you stop them on the street, understand that you need to have businesses here that employ people,” Carcieri said in an interview. “You’ve got to create a climate where all the seeds that we’re planting can grow into real opportunities.”

Another of Carcieri’s major, second-term priorities is building a “green” economy. The concept is sometimes vague, and like biotechnology, every state is chasing it. And yet, going green could be the key to rescuing Rhode Island’s blue-collar laborers from the dying manufacturing industry.

That can only happen, however, if Rhode Island focuses on its obvious advantages and develops training programs to prepare workers to build these industries.

Rhode Island should deemphasize areas that its neighbors have a head start in, such as the solar-power industry in Massachusetts and the fuel-cell field in Connecticut, according to Andrew Dzkewicz, commissioner of the state Office of Energy Resources. Wind power, however, offers a huge opportunity for this small, but coast-rich state sandwiched between big population centers.

The state also has a port at Quonset bordered by a business park with plenty of room for blade and turbine manufacturers to build components and haul them on ships and trains. And it does not have organized opposition of the type that has dragged out Massachusetts-based Cape Wind’s efforts to put turbines off Cape Cod.

Already, New Jersey-based Deepwater Wind is pushing a plan to build a wind farm off Block Island. “We are leading the country” in promoting offshore wind-power development, Carcieri said.

Still, if it’s not careful, Rhode Island can miss its window. Though there is a scarcity of wind power nationally, New Jersey and Delaware have dived into the mix and are poised to outpace Rhode Island if the Ocean State gets too distracted or settles for too slow a pace.

“You can’t be good at everything,” said Atkinson, the former economic-development head. “You’ve got to be somewhat specialized.”

On Aquidneck Island, they’re good at defense. Buoyed by Raytheon, the Navy presence and the long coastline, a variety of companies have cropped up in recent years. Their importance has become even clearer during the recession, as Department of Defense purchases have kept profits flowing.

These companies –– both the giant defense contractors and the small spinoffs –– also feed off the same young innovators who are building software and Web businesses in Providence. They, too, say they need closer connections to the state’s universities and public institutions.

But even if Rhode Island becomes more appealing to new-economy companies, they will need a place to build, said Keith W. Stokes, executive director of the Newport County Chamber of Commerce. One way to address that is to build a modern, environmentally-advanced business park, perhaps as large as 250 acres, according to Scott A. Gibbs, president of the Economic Development Foundation of Rhode Island, which runs the Highland Corporate Park in Cumberland, home to the CVS headquarters.

“You have to accommodate a company’s short time frame,” Gibbs said, “to be able to turn dirt in 60 days.” Some question whether Rhode Island, which in this generation has moved the rivers in downtown Providence and modernized T.F. Green Airport, still has the political will to think big. But the geeks, by nature, are an optimistic bunch.

“We need leaders that are keyed into the community,” said Bergeron, the Cronk Games co-founder. “We are a small enough state that we can be a model for other states to follow.”Innovators’ keys to a new R.I. economy

•End the brain drain — keep college grads in R.I.

•Build the country’s first offshore wind farm.

•Connect entrepreneurs and college innovators.

•Boost public investment in medical and biotechnology research.

•Reform the tax code.

•Train students for know-ledge jobs.

•Develop a high-tech, green business park.

bgedan@projo.com